Notes on Recent Literature. 
188 
the reader is introduced in a chapter of ten pages to Stig- 
maria, Lepidodendron, Medullosa, as well as to Lepidocarpon, Lagcno- 
stoma, Trigonocarpon and other fossil seeds. In Chapter VIII a 
wholesome caution is given to those who look upon the relative 
abundance of fossil Amentiferae as an indication of the primitive 
character of this division of Angiosperms. Chapters IX to XVIII 
deal with the main groups of ancient plants from the Gymnosperms 
to the Thallophytes. The descriptions, though necessarily con¬ 
densed, are by no means dull, and many of the important points are 
well brought out. 
In reference to the Bennettitales Miss Stopes writes : “This 
group is another of the jewels in the crown of fossil botany, for the 
whole of its structures have been reconstructed from the stones 
that hold all that remains of this once extensive and now extinct 
family of plants.” The author's very fluent style is not always 
beyond reproach. Mutation is said to be “ a cloak for an ignorance 
avowedly less mitigated than when we thought to have found a 
complete explanation of the causes of evolution in ‘ environment 
Similar sentences might be quoted to show how carefully the pen 
of a ready writer needs watching. 
This sketch of ancient plants will we believe serve to arouse a 
wider interest in a department of knowledge the welfare of which 
the author has at heart, and in the advancement of which her own 
labours have already played an important part. 
A.C.S. 
“ On a Little Known Type of Vascular Structure 
Re-described by P. Bertrand.” 
In 1879 Renault (2) described under the name of Lepidodendron 
yutieri, a fossil found under a dolmen in Alsatia and regarded by 
him as coming from the Culm ; subsequently he modified the attri¬ 
bution of this form to the Lycopods, placing it with the Ferns and 
re-naming it Adelopliyton jfutieri (3). M. Paul Bertrand has made 
a careful study of Renault’s preparations and in 1907 he published 
an account correcting and extending the latter’s observations (1). 
The striking peculiarities disclosed by Bertrand’s elaborately 
