504 
PROFESSOR W. C. WILLIAMSON ON THE ORGANIZATION 
transmitted vascular bundles to tlie sporangiophores. *In the present instance the 
apertures are in the innermost layer of the bark, and indicate the points at which 
vascular bundles emerged from the central vascular axis. The third angle very 
distinctly exhibits one such lacuna, and it is easy to discover in the specimen itself the 
position of the second one. We have here a triquetrous axis, each truncated angle of 
which gave off two vascular bundles. There being but six sporangiophores, one bundle 
obviously went direct to each sporangiophore ; but in the sterile verticils there were 
12 bracts, and the specimen fig. 13 affords the evidence that in these verticils a 
corresponding number of 12 vascular bundles must have emerged from the outer bark, 
the result of dichotomous division of the six primary ones. 
In my memoir, Part V., p. 65, I endeavoured to demonstrate, so far as the less 
perfect specimens then in my cabinet enabled me to do so, the triquetrous character of 
the axis of this fruit and its consequent affinity with the similar axes of Sphenophyllum 
and Asterophyllites. The specimens now described fully confirm the conclusions then 
arrived at—viz.: that Calamostachys Binneyana had not the slightest relationship with 
the Catamites, but that it had strong affinities with Asterophyllites and Sphenophyllum 
A comparison of the positions of the symmetrically-disposed pairs of apertures in each 
angle of my fig. 14 with that of the vascular bundles of the transverse section of 
Sphenophyllum figured by M. Renault"' will demonstrate how close is the resemblance 
between the two ; and I have no doubt that a similar section made through a perfect 
example of one of the sterile verticils would exhibit exactly identical results with the 
cortical portion of the same figure— i.e., it would show the division of the six bundles 
into 12, exactly corresponding with the number of the lines of elongated cells seen in 
my fig. 14. Unfortunately, the fine section represented in the latter figure has lost the 
cortical layer through which the inner portions of these bundles had to pass; but they 
are distinctly seen, as I have already pointed out, in some of the 12 radial lines of 
elongated cells, c, belonging to the disk represented in that figure. 
In fig. 38 of my memoir, Part V., I represented a section of the central vascular axis 
of Calamostachys Binneyana, in which there appeared to be an exogenous growth 
investing the primary vascular bundle. In describing this axis I pointed out ( loc. cit., 
p. 61) that whilst its centre consisted of barred vessels grouped in the usual way, its 
periphery was composed of similar vessels but arranged in radiating laminae, the inner 
extremities of which exhibited a decided tendency to curve inwards towards three 
points in the periphery of the primary vascular bundle. At the time when this 
specimen was described it was the only one which I had seen exhibiting this peculiar 
structure, and its peripheral margin being imperfect I was unable to determine what 
its normal outline had been. I have more recently received from Mr. Spencer another, 
and fortunately more perfect, specimen of the same form of strobilus, the axis of which 
—surrounded by a portion of its outer cortical parenchyma—is represented in fig. 16. 
* “Nouvelles reaherclies sur la structure de Sphenophyllum, et sur leurs affinites Botaniques,” ‘ Annale 
des Sciences Naturelles,’ 6 e serie, Bot., tom. 4, plate 7, fig. 3, i. 
