Nematophycus Storriei, nov. sp 0 
BY 
C. A. BARBER, M.A., 
Superintendent of Agriculture for the Leeward Islands ; late Scholar of Christ's 
College, and Demonstrator of Botany, in the University of Cambridge. 
With Plates XIX and XX. 
HE anatomical structure and mode of occurrence of 
X primaeval plants cannot but be of great interest to the 
student of nature. For many years past the existence, in the 
Carboniferous age, of gigantic club-mosses and other fern- 
allies has excited our wonder ; and we are now led to believe 
that, in the older rocks of the Devonian and Silurian periods, 
forms existed whose structure points to a close connection 
with the algae. 
Pieces of these fossil plants, of great size, occurring in the 
lower Devonian of Canada, were originally described by Sir 
William Dawson under the name of Prototaxites 1 . This name 
was generally found unsuitable, and Mr. Carruthers, in a well- 
illustrated paper published in the Monthly Microscopic Journal 
of October, 1872, pointed out the algal affinities of the plant, 
and changed the generic name to the more applicable one of 
Nematophycus. 
It may be noted, in passing, as a remarkable fact, that the 
present genus and Pachytheca, long suspected to be parts of 
the same plant, and occurring, for the most part, in the same 
beds, form, with Chara and a few unicellular organisms, the 
1 Geol. Surv. Can., Fossil Plants, 1871. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. VI. No. XXIV. December, 1892.] 
A a 
