50 
come into his possession. This fossil was the upper por- 
tion 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 Lepido- 
strobus. Mr. Carruthers, of the British Museum, after ex- 
amining 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 Lepidcstrobus, and 
named it L. Brownii. Another specimen exactly resem- 
bling Dr. Brown’s is in the museum at Strasbourg. In the 
Comptes Bendus of 7th August last, Professor Adolphe 
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 sporangia full of macrospores. This cone, then, as 
in Lycopodiacese of the genera Selaginella and Isoetes, has 
two kinds of sporangia, those near the summit containing 
the microspores, that is to say the fertilizing 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 Lepidostrobus, under the 
name of Triplosporites Brownii. He says that it presents 
a singular combination of characters, having sporangia 
analogous to those of Isoetes , united to a cone or spike 
resembling that of the Lycopods. He states that nothing 
was known of the age of the deposits from which the three 
specimens above named came except the last, and of course 
X 
this gave little evidence of the true age of the fossil, which 
was found in drift. Now this information I am able to 
