[BH] "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," 1860.
[BI] The genus to which the well-known _Cyclopteris_ (_Adiantites_) _Hibernicus_ of the Devonian of Ireland belongs.
I have elsewhere remarked on the fact that trunks, and petioles, and pinnules of ferns are curiously dissociated in the Devonian beds--an effect of water-sorting, characteristic of a period in which the conditions of deposition were so varied. Another example of this is, that in the sandstones of Gaspé Bay, which have not as yet afforded any example of fronds of ferns, there are compressed trunks, which Mr. Lockwood's specimens allow me at least to conjecture may have belonged to tree-ferns, although none of them are sufficiently perfect for description.
Mr. Lockwood's collection includes specimens of _Psaronius textilis_; and in addition to these there are remains of erect stems somewhat different in character, yet possibly belonging to the higher parts of the same species of tree-fern. One of these is a stem crushed in such a manner that it does not exhibit its form with any distinctness, but surrounded by smooth, cylindrical roots, radiating from it in bundles, proceeding at first horizontally, and then curving downward, and sometimes terminating in rounded ends. They resemble in form and size the aërial roots of _Psaronius Erianus_; and I believe them to be similar roots from a higher part of the stem, and some of them young and not prolonged sufficiently far to reach the ground. This specimen would thus represent the stem of _P. Erianus_ at a higher level than those previously found. We can thus in imagination restore the trunk and crown of this once graceful tree-fern, though we have not the detail of its fronds. Mr. Lockwood's collections also contain a specimen of the large fern-petiole which I have named _Rhachiopteris punctata_. My original specimen was obtained by Prof. Hall from the same horizon in New York. That of Mr. Lockwood is of larger size, but retains no remains of the frond. It must have belonged to a species quite distinct from _Caulopteris Lockwoodi_, but which may, like it, have been a tree-fern.
2. _Caulopteris antiqua_, Newberry.--This is a flattened stem, on a slab of limestone, containing Brachiopods, Trilobites, &c., of the Corniferous limestone. It is about eighteen inches in length, and three and a half inches in average breadth. The exposed side shows about twenty-two large leaf-scars arranged spirally. Each leaf, where broken off, has left a rough fracture; and above this is a semicircular impression of the petiole against the stem, which, as well as the surface of the bases of the petioles, is longitudinally striated or tuberculated. The structures are not preserved, but merely the outer epidermis, as a coaly film. The stem altogether much resembles _Caulopteris Peachii_, but is of larger size. It differs from _C. Lockwoodi_ in the more elongated leaf-bases, and in the leaves being more remotely placed; but it is evidently of the same general character with that species.