Notes. 
659 
sheath-like portion of the whorl, ranged in two or three concentric 
circles between each two whorls of leaves. Each sporangium is borne 
on a thin stalk, from the apex of which it is suspended, bending over 
towards the axis. At the bend, just where the stalk passes over into 
the base of the sporangium, we find a crested ridge, characterized by 
large thick-walled epidermal cells, like those of an annulus. Zeiller 
has come to the same conclusions from studying specimens preserved 
as impressions, which Williamson arrives at from the sections of his 
Bowmanites Dawsoni , and has declared the two forms to be identical, 
both belonging to Sphenophyllum cuneifolium. It seems, however, that 
this specific identification will not hold good. 
The author found exactly the same structure in the original 
specimen of Bowmanites germanicus, Weiss, and in a fruit-spike of 
Sphenophyllum emarginatum in the Dresden Museum. 
A different structure, however, is exhibited by a fragment of a cone, 
which the author has named Bowmanites Romeri , and which was 
found by Ferdinand Romer on the refuse-heaps of the Nieldzielisko 
Colliery in Cracow. In the first place, the superposition of the 
successive whorls forming the spike could here be determined with 
certainty. It could further be shown that several successive circles of 
sporangium-pedicels are inserted upon each whorl. While, however, 
in all forms of Sphenophyllum previously investigated, only a single 
sporangium is borne on the recurved end of the pedicel, in the new 
form two sporangia are suspended from a scale-like enlargement at the 
apex of each pedicel. In all other points of its organization there is 
the greatest similarity with the specimens already known. 
H. GRAF ZU SOLMS-LAUBACH, Strassburg. 
PRELIMINARY NOTE UPON THE STRUCTURE OP 
BACTERIAL CELLS \ — In this preliminary paper, which is a con- 
tinuation of some work already referred to in the Annals of Botany 2 , 
a short account is given of observations which have been in progress 
for some time upon the structure of bacterial cells, especially with 
reference to the question of the presence or absence of a nucleus. It 
is, I think, generally admitted that the structure of the bacterial cell is 
of a simpler kind than that of other cells ; but nearly all observers 
agree in stating that some kind of structure akin to the nucleus is 
1 Abstract of a paper read at the Ipswich meeting of the British Association 
before the Botanical Section. 
2 Annals of Botany, Vol. v, p. 513. 
