SALTER — A LECTURE ON COAL. 



101 



fern-fronds of our lanes and hedge rows. But all are perfect. It 

 is rare to find a disturbed or crumpled leaf, though of course 

 they are often only fragments, such as our brooks and rivers 

 float down. 



I am writing for the younger readers still, or otherwise this sort of 

 lecture would have no business in a scientific periodical, and I shall 

 not, therefore, burden your memories with a number of Latin terms, 

 which would be veiy intelligible to students, such as I hope you may 

 all one day be. However, coal-ferns have not received christian or 

 surnames such as our wild ferns rejoice in. Lady fern and Rock- 

 brakes, Black Maiden-hair and Moonwort, are a great deal easier to 

 remember than Neuropteris Scheuchzerii, and Alethopteris lonchitidis. 

 Prrnjifrris pluhinsa is not such a hard sounding word; Pecopteris Miltonii 

 and P. mwricata are both tolerable. But it so happens that some of our 

 common coal-favourites, like favourite children, have very long and 

 unpronounceable names. Yet we do not like either the less for that. 

 All those I have mentioned above are well-known fossils : all of 



them are found on the conti- 

 nent as well as in England; 

 and one or two of them are to 

 be picked up at every coal-pit. 

 The pretty Alethopteris lonchi- 

 tica may be obtained in the 

 nodules of ironstone in Shrop- 

 shire, and large slabs of it come 

 from Durham. It is sometimes 

 known under another name, 

 Pecopteris lonchitica, but the 

 above is the true one. 



We have represented only a 

 single " pinna" of the plant, for 

 in its perfect state it looks a 

 good deal like our common 

 heath-fern, Pteris aquilina. The 

 P. pht/mosa is like the Lady-fern. 

 P. lorciijtfrridis, a strong-leaved 

 fern, with a thick stalk or 

 rhachis, a good deal resembles 

 the Lastrea, and so on. 



There is a beautiful fern com- 

 mon near Bristol, the Alethopte- 

 ris Serlii, which has fine large leaflets like the Polypody except that it is 

 a compound leaf (vipinnate) instead of a simple one. There are larger 

 ferns still — the species of Neuropteris as they are called, which rival in 

 size our tropic species. But these, numerous as they are, and common 

 too, for there are as many of them as of the genus above quoted, are 

 not quite so often met with. They too, though very rarely, show the 

 fruit on the under side of the leaflets. 



There are the delicate Sphenopteris, whose leaves are of all shapes and 



Fig. 7. — Alethopteris (or Pecopteris) Serlii. 

 Brongniart. — Reduced size. 



