40 
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Leuthardt(l) to the genus Gleichenia. Here the sori can be seen, but the characters 
of the sporangia have not been determined. This is the only case, so far as I am 
aware, in which the sori have been observed in any pre-Cretaceous species of this 
type of frond. 
In Lower Cretaceous rocks this type of frond is more abundant than in the 
Jurassic, and numerous specimens have been figured by Schenk, Heer(2), Nathorst(3), 
Debey and Ettingshausen(4), and others. Recently, Halle(5) has described two species 
from the Cretaceous of Patagonia, and Seward(6) another from the Jurassic of Scotland. 
Many of these have been referred to the genus Gleichenites. 
I am well aware that, in the case of some of the Cretaceous and Tertiary fronds 
referred to Gleichenites, there are much better grounds for the belief in affinity to 
the living Gleichenia than exist in the case of the Jurassic species. My view is that 
if this term is used at all it is best preserved for cases where some further evidence 
than similarity of leaf-form has been found to exist. 
As regards the Jurassic examples from New Zealand, there is the choice either of 
following others blindly in referring them to the genus Gleichenites (despite the absence 
of any real evidence of affinity with Gleichenia, and the thoroughly bad nature of 
the genus, as originally used for what are now thought to be Palaeozoic Pteridosperms) 
or of applying some new non-committal name to them. The former course may 
simplify the synonymy, but the latter appears to me to be far more scientific. A 
third possibility, of emending Goeppert’s generic diagnosis out of all recognition, does 
not seem to me justifiable. I have therefore decided to refer these plants to a new 
genus, Microphyllopteris, by which term I imply simply ferns with small leaflets. 
Diagnosis. —Fronds pinnate, bipinnate, or dichotomously branched ; pinnules small 
or very small, subcircular or ovate, closely set, broadest at the base, and attached 
by their whole base. Median nerve feeble, breaking up into simple or forked branches 
not far from the base of the pinnule. 
1 Microphyllopteris pectinata (Hector). Plate VII, figs. 3-6, 8-11. 
1886. Lomarites pectenata Hector, bet. Cat. & Guide, N. Zeal. Court, Ind. & Col. Exhib., 
p. 66, fig. 30a(5). 
Diagnosis. —Frond bipinnate ? ; pinnae 8 cm. or more in length; rachis fairly 
stout, sometimes grooved, bearing subopposite or alternate small rounded pinnules, 
about 6 mm. long and up to 5 mm. across. Pinnules somewhat thick. Lateral 
nerves forking once or twice. 
Description of the Specimens.- —All the examples of this plant from the Mataura 
Falls beds (Plate VII, figs. 8 and 10) are poorly preserved, and in none of them 
is the nervation seen. Much better specimens, of what I take to be the same plant, 
occur in the Neocomian rocks of Waikato Heads, Auckland, and on these the above 
diagnosis is chiefly founded. 
Of these, two specimens in the New Zealand Survey collection are shown in 
Plate VII, figs. 4 and 11, the former twice enlarged, the latter natural size. A part 
of fig. 11 is also seen, four times enlarged, on fig. 6 of the same plate, to show 
the nervation. The pinnules are subcircular, and about 4 mm. in length. The lateral 
nerves fork widely. 
(1) Leuthardt (1903), pt. ii, p 40, pi. xviii, 
figs. 3, 3a. 
(2) Heer (1874), p. 43, pi. iv-x, &c. 
(3) Nathorst (1890), p. 8, pi. iv, figs. 3-5. 
(4) Debey and Ettingshausen (1859), p. 6, 
pi. 1. 
(5) Halle (1913 1 2 3 ), pp. 22-23, pi. 1, figs. 14-18. 
(6) Seward (1911), p. 664, pi. iii, figs. 48-58a ; 
pi. v, figs. 87-89, 92-96 ; text-fig. 5. 
