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VI. — The Anatomy and Affinity of Stromatopteris moniliformis, Mett. By John 
M'Lean Thompson, M.A., D.Sc., Senior Assistant to the Professor of Botany, and 
late Robert Donaldson Research Scholar, Glasgow University. Communicated by 
Professor F. 0 . Bower, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Four Plates, and Figures in the text.) 
(Read February 5, 1917. MS. received February 6, 1917. Issued separately June 15, 1917.) 
Historical Survey. 
In the year 1861 the ferns collected by Vieillard in the island of New Caledonia 
were described by Mettenius in a paper entitled “Filices Novae Caledonise” (Ann. 
Sc. Nat., iv, 15). Among the organisms described was a new and remarkable fern for 
the reception of which a new Gleicheniaceous genus Stromatopteris was founded. 
Having noted in particular the absence of roots, and the hairy and sclerotic char- 
acter of the axis, Mettenius figured the latter as obliquely ascending at its base, 
but as upright and closely and repeatedly branched more distally. The simply 
pinnate unbranched leaf was described as a direct continuation of a branch of the 
axis, with nodular base, slender rachis, and many small leathery pinnse with sym- 
podial dichotomous venation. With regard to the sori, attention was directed in 
particular to their development singly on the pinnse and towards the base of the 
upper margins, and to the mound-like hairy receptacle which lodged the forking 
of the basal acroscopic vein. The sporangia, numbering from two to six, were stated 
to be distributed on the back and towards the periphery of the receptacle; their 
stalks were short and massive, the annulus complete and transverse, and dehiscence 
longitudinal and extrorse. 
At the present day, when such criteria as the anatomical features of stem and leaf 
and the exact details of sporangial-form and spore-output are more fully appreciated 
by the systematise, generic rank might not be assigned to any organism on the 
evidence given above ; but it was on these characters of pinna-form, soral position, 
venation, sporangial-form, and dehiscence alone that Mettenius relied in founding 
this new genus, and in recognition of the peculiar arrangement of the leaves he 
named its first and only species Stromatopteris moniliformis, Mett. 
But Moore, on the other hand, was not inclined to consider the features noted by 
Mettenius sufficiently individualistic to allow of a new foundation, and in his Index 
Filicum, ii, p. 379, 1862, Stromatopteris was sunk in Gleichenia, and appeared in 
the enumeration of the species as Gleichenia moniliformis, Moore ; and later, in 
Lyell’s Geographical Handbook it was similarly named. 
In 1873 further reference to this plant was made by Fournier in his “Filices 
Novae Caledonise: Enumeratio monographia ” (Ann. Sc. Nat., v, 18); but, in re- 
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