Ordinary Meeting, January 9th, 1872. 
E. W. Binney, F.R.S., F.G.S., President, in the Chair. 
The President exhibited some specimens of a fossil 
plant resembling the Psaronius Ze idler i found in the Upper 
Foot Coal Seam, near Oldham. This species has been 
described by Corda, in his Beitrage Zur Flora Der Vorvelt, 
and figured in Plate XL,, but has not hitherto, he believed, 
been met with in the British coal fields. The Oldham 
specimen appeared to him to be a petiole, of about one- 
eighth of an inch in diameter, and is of a nearly circular 
form in its transverse section, two-thirds of it consisting of a 
zone of strong parenchymatous tissue and an internal axis 
of vascular tissue arranged in four radiating arms of an 
irregular oval form, resembling a St. Peter’s cross. As he 
could not connect the specimen with a stem of Psaronius, 
he proposed to call it Stauropteris Oldhamia. 
In the above-named coal, as well as that of the Lower 
Brooksbottom Seam, there is a great variety of beautiful 
petioles which have not yet been described. Some of them 
evidently belong to the genus Zygopteris, and may probably 
be discovered in connection with their stems, but most of 
them have been found detached and sometimes mistaken 
for the rootlets of Stigmaria. From some specimens in his 
cabinet he is led to believe that Cotta’s Medullosa elegans 
is merely the racliis of a fern or a plant allied to one. For 
the best specimen of Stauropteris he is indebted to the 
liberality of that intelligent collector of fossil plants, Mr. 
James Whitaker, of Waterslieddings, near Oldham. 
Pboceedings — Lit. & Phil. Soc. — Yol. XI. — No. 7. — Session 1871-2. 
