A PERMIAN FOSSILS. 
Diagnosis.—“ F. caule pinnatum ramosa, foliis sparsis numerosis, caulem indique, 
tegentibus, oblongo-linearibus membranaceis (F) enervis.”* 
After examining a number of specimens, none of which, however, were so 
instructive as could be desired, the writer feels it necessary to unite the three so-called 
species Voltzia Phillipsii, Lind. and Hutt., Mucoides selaginoides, Sternb., and F. lycopo- 
doides, Sternb., the differences being so slight, that he is strongly persuaded they 
represent different parts of the same species. 
The form named Lwcordes lycopodoides, according to M. Ad. Brongniart, strongly 
resembles those Caulerpas with distichous leaves, as C. pennata, Tourn., and C. taxifolia, 
Tourn.: it appears to differ from them simply in the leaves being larger, and less 
regularly arranged. The specimen of C. selaginoides figured in the ‘ Histoire des 
Végétaux Fossiles’ agrees in many respects with the C. selago. 
Pinna (2) prisca, Minster, appears to be a compressed portion of the stem of 
Caulerpa (?) selaginoides. Fragments of a vegetable fossil occasionally occur in the 
Marl-slate strikingly resembling the figure in Count Minster’s ‘ Beitrage,’ and which 
it is difficult to conceive to be anything else but the remains of the stem of this plant. 
They are transversely barred, somewhat as in the fossil figured by Count Minster, 
a character which appears to be due to transverse cracks, resulting from the shrinking 
up of the (cellular ?) substance of which they were composed. 
As Professor Sedgwick, in the Supplement to his paper (Trans. Geol. Soc. 2d series, 
vol. i, p. 239), doubts “the two vegetable impressions,” noticed by him elsewhere 
(Op. cit. pp. 77, 120), as being “two species of Fern,” it is suggested that one of 
them may have been the fossil under consideration: there can be little doubt, 
however, that at least one of them was a plant of this kind (vide Meuropteris 
fluttoniana). 
Caulerpa (?) selaginoides occurs in the Marl-slate at Thrislington Gap, Midderidge 
(Sedgwick), Cornforth, Whitley, Cullercoats Bay, Brussleton, and Thickley, but 
nowhere is it very common. Geinitz records it as occurring in the equivalent rock 
(Kupferschiefer) at Mansfeld, Iimenau, and Reichelsdorf; and in the lower Zechstein 
of Corbusen, Germany. The so-called Pixna (?) prisca is stated to occur in the 
Kupferschiefer of Merzenberge near Gera, between Milbitz and Thieschiitz.’ 
' Brongniart, Histoire des Vegétaux Fossiles, p. 23, 1828. 
2 A privately published lithograph appeared a few years since, representing a specimen of a gigantic 
Fucus, apparently of the genus Halymenia, found in the New Red Sandstone at Woodside, on the 
Mersey. As it is questionable whether this formation belongs to the upper division of the Permian system, 
or the inferior portion of the Trias, it has been deemed advisable to allude to this fossil only thus in- 
cidentally. For the same reason, a mere notice must suffice for the fucoids discovered by Mr. J. S. Dawes in 
probably the same formation, between Birmingham and Walsall. (Vide Report of the British Association, 
held at Manchester, 1842, p. 47; Transactions of the Sections.) 
