134 
Records of ihe Geological Survey of India. 
[VOL. X. 
Sternhergi , Cord, (or Caulopteris 'punctata, Gopp.) is clearly described as from the lowest 
strata of the cretaceous rocks, the so-called Perutz-beds, near Kaunic and Vyserovic, 
so that there could no longer exist any doubt about it. Prof. Krejci did not, however, 
mention any fossils from the clays associated with the sandstones. 
When in 1870 I joined the party for the geological exploration of Bohemia, I visited 
several localities in these lowest plant-bearing strata of the cretaceous rocks, especially the 
localities Nckvizd, Vyserovic, and Kaunic, east of Prague, and I saw the sandstone con¬ 
taining the fern stems intercalated with clay bands, in which were numerous plant-remains, 
consisting of some fern fronds, some coniferous branches, but especially dicotyledonous 
leaves, amongst which the peculiar genus Credneria, a typical cretaceous genus, was very 
frecpient; in general the fossils agreed mostly with those described by Prof. Heer from 
Molatin in Moravia, and with those from Niedersckona in Saxony (as far as they are 
known), both which localities, as well as those in Bohemia, belong to the Cenomanian; thus 
it was quite plain that Protopteris Sternhergi , Cord, (Lepidodendron punctatum, Stbg.), 
was a cretaceous tree-fern. 
Also Prof. Komer in his Geologie von Oherschlesien, 1870, describes Protopteris 
Sternhergi, Cord., as distinctly cretaceous. 
Subsequently, in my monograph on fossil tree-ferns from Bohemia* * * § (carboniferous, 
permian, and cretaceous), I described the relations of these beds near Kaunic, which contain 
he Protopteris Sternhergi, and are Cenomanian. 
Previously to this Prof Goppertf had twice shown that Protopteris Sternhergi is 
cenoman, and placed his Caulopteris Singeri with it. 
Prof. Heer in 1874 seems still to have known only the older descriptions of this fern 
as carboniferous, so that in his third volume of the Flora Fossils Aretica the locality Ujara- 
susnk of Disco in Greenland is described, from the occurrence of this Protopteris Sternhergi, 
as belonging to the carboniferous formation; hut in a preface to the work he mentions a 
letter of mine to him on the occurrence of Protopteris in Bohemia, and then refers correctly 
the fern stem from Greenland to the cretaceous formation. 
In Schimper’s Pal. vlgetale, 1869-74, we find Protopteris Sternhergi still quoted as 
from carboniferous. 
Its true horizon has been, however, fully confirmed also in other countries; the same fern 
was found in cretaceous (Unter Quader—Cenoman) of Saxony; £ and Mr. Carruthers § de¬ 
scribed it from the Upper Greensand in England (Shaftesbury in Dorsetshire), distinctly 
saying, on p. 485, that Dr. Fritsch of Prague has informed him that the beds from which 
Caulopteris punctata was obtained are Upper Greensand (cenoman). 
In 1867 Prof. Unger || described a very nice fern stem from the cretaceous (Neocomian) 
near Ischl in Austria, to which our form from Triehinopoly is mostly allied. But Unger 
also was at that time quite unacquainted both with Prof. Krejei’s publications about the 
tree ferns in Bohemia (1853), and with Carruthers’ description of the same species from the 
English Upper Greensand, for he says, on page 648, that the Ischl species would be the first 
tree-fern in the cretaceous formation. 
* Abhandl. d. K.biibm. GesoUseh. d. Wissensch. 1872, with two plates, 
t Zeitschrift. d. D. Geol. Gesellseh, 1865, p. 643, and N. Jahrb. f. Min. etc, 1865, p. 396. 
% Genitz Elbtlialgebirge 1875, p. 304, Pi. 67, f. 1 (Palaeontografica, Cassel). 
§ Geolog, Magazine, 1865, p. 484, Pi. XIII. 
|| Sitzungberichte der k, k. Acad, der Wissensch. LV, 1, 1867, p. 642, et sej„ PI. I. 
