114 



FOSSIL PLANTS. 



striatus. Corpus corticale crassum meduUosum. Cylindricus lignosus minutus, e stratis 

 duplicibus compositus. Stratum internum continuum annuliforme, externo adpressum, 

 vasis irregulariter positis amplis, sexangularibus. Stratum externum crassum, e vasis 

 minutis seriatis et fasciculatim junctis compositum, et radiis vasorum ligni interni 

 percursum. Radii meduUaris nuUi. Medulla ampla." 



By the author's figure the medulla appears to be altogether wanting in the centre of the 

 specimen ; what it was composed of there is no evidence to show ; it might have been 

 parenchymatous tissue, or barred tubes. The vascular bundles shown traversing the 

 woody cylinder, and their free communication with the inside medulla, and the rounded 

 ends of such cylinder as well as the curved bundle of vascular tubes seen in the longi- 

 tudinal section, show a considerable difference in structure from both JDiploxylon and 

 Sigillaria vascularis described by me in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' 



10. King {Sigillaria and Anabathra). — Professor W. King,^ in a most excellent 

 paper entitled Contributions towards establishing the General Characters of the Fossil 

 Plants of the Genus Sigillaria,''' gave a lucid account of Brongniart's Sigillaria, showing 

 its connection with Stigmaria ; also some valuable original observations on specimens 

 from Ouseburn, and North Biddick, proving that Sigillaria had a Stigmaroid root. 

 His remarks on Mr. Witham's Anabathra pulcherrima show that its woody cylinder was 

 identical in structure with that of Sigillaria vascularis, having been furnished with the 

 sharp dark line separating it from the pith, without the interstices between the wedge- 

 shaped bundles of the woody cylinder so distinctly shown in the Corda's Biploxylon 

 cycado'ideum : — 



" Let us, in the next place, consider that remarkable fossil which Mr. Witham was 

 the first to make known, under the name Anabathra pulcherrima. At the time 

 when Anabathra was described few botanists had attended to the minute difference in 

 vegetable tissue, which forms so conspicuous a feature in the phytological works of the 

 present day ; hence a few errors have been committed in drawing up the description 

 which has been published of this fossil. Some of these errors have been rectified by 

 M. Brongniart in his ' Observations on the Internal Structure of Sigillaria elegans ;' but, 

 as there are others which this gentleman had not the means of correcting, I have been 

 induced to enter into the following description more minutely than would have been other- 

 wise necessary. It requires also to be stated that, with the view of enabling me to become 

 acquainted with the internal structure of fossil plants in general, Mr. Witham has, in the 

 most handsome manner, placed in my hands the whole of his invaluable collection of sections, 

 among which there is an instructive suite of Anabathra. To this gentleman, for so marked 

 an act of kindness, there is certainly due from me an expression of deep obligation. 



" Before commencing to describe the tissues of Anabathra it is necessary to make a 

 slight reference to the state in which Mr. Witham's specimen existed when first dis- 



^ 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal,' vol. xxxviii, p. 119, 1845. 



