l 0F THE FOSSIL PLANTS OF THE COAL-MEASURES. 537 
In the sections of the strobiles many of the sporangia contain a cpiantity of dis¬ 
organised fragments, which appear to me to be the remains of microspores. Of course 
this Traquarian macrospore now merges its specific individuality in the strobilus of 
which it forms so characteristic a feature. But as it is desirable that the well-known 
name should be retained in connexion with it, I propose for the entire cone the name 
of Lepidostrobus Traquaria. 
In the previous part of the memoir (p. 510, fig. 38) I described, under the name of 
Sporocarpon asteroides, a structure which appeared to me to be a spherical reproductive 
organ, and not a mere section of some cylindrical body. Mr. Spencer, of Halifax, has 
obtained several additional examples of this organism, which demonstrate the correct¬ 
ness of my previous conclusion. They vary much in the size, shape, and number of 
their radial appendages, but in the peculiar features of their regular parenchymatous 
tissue, and in the perfectly spherical form of their central cavity, they agree with the 
example already figured. The one now represented (fig. 89) displays a second mem¬ 
brane (a) within the clearly-defined spherical cavity; this membrane encloses an 
opaque, spherical mass (b). Similar conditions are seen in several of the other Sporo- 
carpons which I have already described. 
I am indebted to Mr. George Wild, of the Bardsley Collieries, Ashton-under-Lyne, 
for the fine specimen of a new Zygopteroid form of fern-stem or petiole, of which a 
transverse section is given in fig. 90, enlarged nearly 6 diameters. Mr. Wild found the 
specimen in a shale heap, containing the usual marine Ganister fossils ( Goniatites, 
Avicidopectens, &c.), and which had come from the roof of the “Bullion” coal near 
Burnley. The maximum diameter of the slightly ovoid section is three quarters of 
an inch, but we certainly have not the entire bark, which has lost some of its 
external portions, though how much I cannot ascertain. Its present outermost layer 
of large cells corresponds pretty closely with that seen in Rachiopteris bibractiensis, 
immediately below the prosenchymatous layer which constitutes its peripheral portion; 
as a corresponding prosenchyma forms the periphery of the allied R. Laccittii, and, 
though in a less degree, of the R. elegans, described in this memoir, it is most probable 
that a similar layer invested the coarse outer parenchyma of the plant under con¬ 
sideration. 
The vascular axis, a, approaches nearer, in its general contour, to that of R. bibrac¬ 
tiensis, than to that of R. Lacattii, especially in the trim neatness of its vessels, and in 
the perfect parallelism of the two sides of the central bar, a, which in R. Lacattii 
are oppositely convex. But the two transverse bars, a , a', differ from the similar ones 
in R. bibractiensis, in the absence of the very distinct peripheral bands of vessels 
somewhat imperfectly shown at a", in fig. 49 of my sixth memoir. In the plant now 
described, the outer margin of each of the transverse bars, a', a, is occupied, as in 
R. Lacattii, by a series of vessels much smaller than those constituting the rest of the 
axis, and from which the foliar (?) bundles have arisen. Surrounding this vascular 
axis is a thin layer of parenchymatous cells, b, which I expect has originally formed 
