442 cash: fossil fructifications of YORKSHIRE COAL MEASURES. 
The strata below the soft bed coal contains nothing very 
noteworthy in the Halifax district, but in the neighbourhood of 
Huddersfield occur what are called the soft bed flags, and under 
them certain layers of shale containing fossils such as Aviculopectens, 
Goniatites, and some fish remains. At the bottom of the series is a 
bed of coal about six inches thick, having under it the usual seat 
earth, these lie conformably upon the Rough Rock." 
Among the various fossil fruits which have been found in the 
Coal Measures are small cones or fruit spikes, which were originally 
included in Sternberg's genus Volkmamda, the definition of this 
genus is not quite satisfactory, as indeed it may be used to designate 
fruit spikes, which are now distinctly referable to other well-defined 
genera. The two fruit-spikes exhibiting structure in our Yorkshire 
measures, and which were originally assigned to the genus Volkmannia, 
are Volkmannia Dawsoni, (Boivmanites Dawsoni), and Volkmannia 
Binneiji, {Calamostachys Binneyana.) These, along with Calamostachi/s 
Casheana, and Williamson's True Fruit of the Calamities " are the 
only ones which I know from Yorkshire "which contain structure which 
can be ascribed to Weiss' group of Calamariae. 
Calamostachys Binneyana was described by Professor Carruthers 
in Seeman's Journal of Botany, Vol. V., 18G7, in a paper " On the 
Structure of the Fruit of Calamities," under the name of Volkm nmia 
Binneyi, when, from the material then at his command, he concluded 
that it was a true Calamitean fruit-spike, and in comparing its 
organisation with that of the fruit-spike of Equisetum, he pointed out 
their apparent identity of organisation. In a lecture given by the 
learned Professor before the Royal Institution of Great Britain on 
16th April, 1869, he said "A comparison of the fossil cone {Volkmannia 
Binneyi), with the fruit of Equisetum, exhibits a remarkable agree- 
ment with everj^ point of importance. In the form of the fruit-bearing 
leaves, the arrangement and structure of the sporangia, the form 
size, and structure of the spores, even to the possession of hygrometric 
elaters, both fruits agTce. The only difference is that in the modern 
plant all the leaves of the cone are fruit-bearing, while in the fossil 
every other whorl retains a form closely approaching that of the 
normal leaf of the plant. As these envelop and protect the fruit- 
