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 very intelhgible to students, such as I hope you may 
all one day be. However, coal-ferns have not received chi'istian 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 NeurojJteris Scheuchzera, and Aletliopteris louchitidis. 
Pecopteris plumosa is not such a hard sounding word ; Pecopteris MiUonii 
and P. muricata 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- 
ilea 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 aqiiilina. The 
P. plumosa is like the Lady-fern. 
P. loreopteridis, 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 oiNeuropteris as they are called, w^hich 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 ihe 
fruit on the under side of the leaflets. 
There are the delicate ^jp/«€^ap^e/-i5, whose leaves are of all shapes and 
— Alethopteris for Pecopteris) Serlii. 
Brongniaxt.— Reduced size. 
