426 Solms-L cutback. — On the Fructification 
the time clear up ; to do this would have required such an 
exactly transverse orientation of the slices as could not be 
obtained thirty years ago without difficulty and great waste 
of material. If I have contributed anything to the explana- 
tion of some of these points, as I think that I have, it is 
entirely due to the great liberality of Sir J. D. Hooker and 
Mr. Thiselton-Dyer in entrusting me with a portion of the 
precious material for the preparation of new slices, and of 
Carruthers himself in affording me repeated opportunities of 
examining the specimen preserved in the British Museum, 
and the preparations on which his work is founded. And 
if the present paper is occupied exclusively with the inflo- 
rescences of Bennettites gibsonianus , Carr., it is because my 
chief object is, by a detailed discussion of the characters 
disclosed in these fructifications, to obtain a foundation for 
the examination which I hope in time to make of the other 
forms. 
The material employed in the study of Bennettites gibso- 
nianus was obtained from a single large block, found in 1856 
or 1857 by Thomas Field Gibson, in Luccomb Chine, at Bon- 
church, in the Isle of Wight, the history of which appears in 
the memorandum given below. It is true that Carruthers 1 
says that waterworn fragments of this species and of B. saxby- 
anus have been mistaken for portions of Bucklandia anomala 
by Mantell in his ‘Medals of Creation 2 ,’ and that Fig. 57 in 
that work gives a very good woodcut of these fragments, & c. 
But after examination of these specimens, which are in the 
Geological Department of the British Museum, I am not 
satisfied that they really belong to B. gibsonianus . Of one 
of them, to which Mantell’s statements respecting the internal 
structure probably apply, I have spoken above; the others 
bear the numbers from Mantell’s collection, I. 38361 and 
38363. No. I. 38361 is labelled gibsonianus , No. 38363 sax- 
by anus, in Carruthers’ own handwriting. Lastly, No. 38360, of 
which Mantell gives a separate figure, is also named B. gib- 
sonianus by Carruthers. All these fragments are specimens 
1 See Carruthers, loc. cit., p. 700. 2 See vol. i. p. 163. 
