Br Martins on Antediluvian Plants. ^79 
ed manner, neither referable to the genus Yucca nor to that of 
Cactus^ and to which Sternberg has given the name of Lepido- 
dendron dicliotomum. There are, indeed, certain species of Ficoi- 
deae, such, for example, as Sempervivum arhoreum^ which re- 
semble this plant in having the bark marked with squarish or 
rhombiform areolae, but their bark never forms scales separable 
from the wood, and rather presents the appearance of tessellar 
spaces, than true and distinct scales. I am of opinion that the 
Lepidodendron dichotomiim may, with more propriety, be re- 
ferred to a new ffenus which I met with in Brazil. The fields 
of the province of Minas Geraes^ at a height of 2000 feet and 
upwards above the level of the sea, and especially the diamond 
district, afibrd a genus of the order Composite, much allied to 
the Vernonioe of Linnaeus and the PoUalestce of Humboldt, which 
seems to correspond in every character with our petrified plant. 
I propose naming it Lychnophora, and shall describe several 
species of it in another dissertation, confining myself here to the 
characters derived from its general habit. 
The Lychnopkorce are shrubs of about the height of a man, 
or a little higher, with the trunk, simple beneath, and divided 
above into several corymboso-fastigiate branches, everywhere in- 
vested with a very dense tomentum of very fine hairs, elevated 
into small elliptical or squarish areolm, which emit a leaf from 
the middle. The leaves are thickish, commonly revolute at the 
margin, narrow, linear, or lanceolate, densely scattered toward 
the summits of the branches, patent or erecto-patent, more rare- 
ly recurvate, readily falling off, and then leaving small foveolse 
in the pulvinate tessellae of the down. The flower terminal, 
densely capitate, either furnished with floral leaves, or bare. 
Whoever compares the figures and description of Lepidoden- 
dron dicliotomum with these living plants, in respect to habit, 
ramifications, and the tessellated work investing the trunk, which 
in the fossil plants is converted into charcoal, will be convinced, 
by their numerous points of agreement, of the existence of a per- 
fect identity, and be constrained to join in my opinion. 
I therefore distinguish the Lyclinophorites by the following 
character : 
Trunk dichotomously branched above with attenuated 
branches, all invested with tessellated work, the tessellse foliifer- 
T 2 
