HICK : OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE YORKSHIRE CALAMITY. 7 
Index " * to his memoirs, has placed Calamostachys Binneyana, 
Schimp., among the Calamariecc. At the same time he expresses a 
suspicion that under that name more than one species of fruit may 
be comprehended. 
From a careful study of a number of preparations of this type 
of Calamostachys I have come to the conclusion that by this change 
Williamson has come nearer the truth as to its affinities than in his 
previous memoirs. It must not be overlooked, however, that to 
place some of the forms of Calamostachys Binneyana, Schimp., in 
the large group of Calamariea? is not the same thing as to affirm 
that they are the fruits of some species of Calamitw. That they 
are such is an opinion held by Carruthers, Binney, Schimper, and 
other palseophytologists, but to the best of my belief no specimen 
has hitherto been published whose axial tissues afford the evidence 
necessary to give this view a complete and irrefragable foundation. 
We are in this position then, that, as was pointed out by Carruthers 
long ago, Calamostachys Binneyana, Schimp., agrees in almost every 
detail with the sporiferous spike of Equisetum, and is, therefore, 
probably a fruit of some Calamitean plant. But the tissues of the 
axis which would clinch the argument for or against such a deter- 
mination, are in all specimens hitherto described, so imperfectly 
preserved that their evidence is not decisive and cannot, therefore, be 
invoked on either side. I need scarcely say, that to a pakeophy- 
tologist this is most tantalising, and if he is a Yorkshireman it is 
doubly so, for the remains of Calamostachys Binneyana, Schimp., 
are not infrequent in the Yorkshire Coal Measures, and the conviction 
lies near that if they were thoroughly overhauled, the missing link 
would be found and this important question settled once and for all. 
It is proverbially unsafe to prophesy unless you know, and I will 
avoid doing so. But I have an unusually strong suspicion that the 
axis of our Yorkshire specimens of Calamostachys Binneyana will yet 
prove to agree with the stem of some form of Calamitw, and that 
in some cases at least, this " fruit" will turn out to be the spike of 
Arthropitys. Be this, however, as it may, the time appears to have 
* Proc. of the Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc, 4th Ser. , vol. iv. 
