62 PROOEEDINaS OF SOCIETIES. KZTj«Tff 
Bristol Miceoscopical Society. 
The last report received from this Society is of the meeting of 
Nov. 19th, Mr. W. J. Fedden, Vice-President, in the chair. A paper 
was read by Dr. 0. T. Hudson " On the Anatomy of Triarthra 
longiseta,'" which was illustrated by numerous microscopic specimens 
and diagrams. 
Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. 
Ordinary Meeting, December 1st, 1968. — R. Angus Smith, Ph.D., 
F.E.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. — ' Note on Professor William- 
son's paper "On an undescribed Type of Calamodendron from the 
Upper Coal Measures of Lancashire,"' by E. W. Binney, F.R.S., 
F.G.S. 
I had not the pleasure of hearing Professor Williamson's paper on 
Calamopitus read, but from the abstract printed in the ' Society's Pro- 
ceedings ' it is quite evident that the Professor's plant is very different 
from the Calamodendron commune described by me in the last volume 
of the ' Transactions of the Palaeontographical Society.' I have found 
casts of the pith of the Sigillaria vascularis which ordinary collectors 
would call a Calamites, and in two specimens of Dadoxylon I have met 
with Catamites cannoeformis as the pith of one, and C. ajpproximatus as 
the pith of the other. Sternbergia has long been known to be the pith 
of Dadoxylon, so now the genus Catamites in all probability will have 
to be very considerably modified and some of its species classed with 
other genera. Some years since that profound botanist the late Dr. 
Robert Brown, in a memoir printed in the ' Transactions of the Lin- 
neean Society,' vol. xx., p. 3, 1851, gives some account of Trijplosporites, 
an undescribed fruit which had lately come into his possession. This 
fossil was the upper portion of a cone which showed sporangia full of 
minute spores in a beautiful state of preservation. The author, after 
the examination of a similar specimen in M. A. Brongniart's cabinet, 
was inclined to refer the plant to the genus Lepidostrohus. Mr. Car- 
ruthers, of the British Museum, after examining Dr. Brown's specimen, 
in a paper printed in the 'Geological Magazine' for October, 1865, on 
an undescribed cone from the coal measures near Airdrie, Lanarkshire, 
came to the conclusion that it was a Lepidostrohus, and named it L. 
Brownii. Another specimen exactly resembling Dr. Brown's is in the 
museum at Strasbourg. In the ' Gomptes Rendus' of 7th August last. 
Professor Adolph Brongniart describes a wonderfully perfect cone 
identical with Dr. Brown's specimen in the upper portion of the cone, 
with sporangia full of microspores, but in its lower part having spo- 
rangia full of macrospores. This cone, then, as in LycopodiaceeD of 
the genera Selaginella and Isoetes, has two kinds of sporangia, those 
near the summit containing the microspores, that is to say, the ferti- 
lizing spores, and others near the base of the cone containing the 
macrospores or germinating spores. M. Brongniart is inclined to 
class the fossil plant as distinct from Lepidostrohus, under the name of 
Triplosporites Brownii. He says that it presents a singular combina- 
tion of characters, having sporangia analogous to those of Isoetes, 
