Lycopodiaceous Cones from the Lower Coal Measures. 387 
of appendages is one of the most characteristic of the vegetative characters 
of the group. 
There is hence a considerable probability that the acquirement of 
an alternating verticillate arrangement of appendages in the cones of 
a Ly copod is a specialization. 
The modern stock description of Spencerites as having the sporangium 
attached distally to a ‘ventral hump ’ on the sporophyll, gives only a very 
misleading idea of the real ar- 
rangement of the cone, which 
was so accurately described by 
Dr. Scott. 
The f ventral hump 5 when 
cut tangentially is seen to be 
a rhomboidal peltate head 
which fits very tightly on to its 
neighbours, forming a magni- 
ficent protection to the spor- 
angia, compared to which that 
given by the weak and ob- 
viously easily damaged lamina 
described by Miss Berridge 
is negligible (cp. Text-fig. 3). 
It is to be noticed that the ar- 
rangement of the sporophylls 
in alternating verticils makes 
this much neater that it other- 
wise would be. There is thus 
an obvious utilitarian purpose 
in the 1 ventral hump \ 
The fact which probably I y 
impresses most stiongly the Text-fig. 3. Tangential section of a cone of 
Student of palaeozoology is that Spencerites insignis (Q. 489). x 14. Dotted lines 
r indicate that the present edge of an organ is manifestly 
tWO branches of a race which incomplete. The sporophylls are unshaded. The figure 
there was some tendency in 
their original stock to produce these particular characters : this is, I believe, 
Osborn's 4 Doctrine of Rectigradations 
I have shown that it is possible to provide a plausible explanation 
of the rise of a radially elongated sporophyll in the heterosporous arboreal 
Lycopods, and that this sporophyll probably passed through a condition 
reminding one of Spencerites . 
