174 
Notes. 
Cone, 3-4 cm. in diameter, seated on a distinct peduncle. Sporo- 
phylls, twelve in each verticil. 
Each sporophyll usually sexpartite, three segments belonging to the 
inferior, and three to the superior, lobe. 
Sporangia densely crowded. 
Spores about 0-065 mm - in diameter. 
Horizon : Calciferous Sandstone Series. 
Locality: Pettycur, near Burntisland, Scotland. Found by Mr. 
James Bennie, of Edinburgh. 
Both generic and specific characters are manifestly subject to altera- 
tion, if other similar fossils should be discovered. In the meantime 
the above diagnoses are given in order to facilitate identification. 
Affinities. 
Any full discussion of affinities must be reserved for the detailed 
memoir, which I hope to lay before the Royal Society in a short time. 
At present only a few suggestions will be offered. 
The idea of a near relationship to Lepidostrobus — so specious at 
first sight — is negatived by accurate investigation. There may have 
been a certain resemblance in external habit, as there is in the 
naked-eye appearance of the sections, but this means nothing more 
than that the specimen is a large cone, with crowded sporophylls 
and radially elongated sporangia. The only real resemblance to 
Lepidostrobus is in the polyarch strand of primary wood, but even 
here the details, as, for example, the structure of the tracheae, do not 
agree. In other respects the differences from any Lepidodendroid 
fructification are as great as they can be. 
I do not doubt that the genus with which Cheirostrobus has most 
in common is Sphenophyllum . The chief points of agreement are as 
follows : — 
1. The superposed foliar whorls. This certainly agrees with the 
vegetative parts of Sphenophyllum, and, according to Count Solms- 
Laubach, the superposition holds good for the bracts of its strobili also 1 . 
2. The deeply divided palmatifid sporophylls, agreeing with the 
leaves of various species of Sphenophyllum , e. g. S. tenerrimum. 
3. The division of the sporophyll into a superior or ventral, and 
an inferior or dorsal, lobe, agreeing with the arrangement in 
1 Bowmanites Romeri , eine neue Sphenophylleen-Fructification, 1895, p. 242. 
