File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12980922895).jpg

82
PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. .April 28,
belong to Gutbier. Mr. J. Smith*, whose valuable researches and
works on the recent ferns are well known, has substituted the name
Dictymia for the living ferns assigned to Dictyopteris by Presl.
WOODWAEDITES ? RoBEETSI, Sp. UOV.
The specimen figured (figs. 1, 2) is unfortunately only a portion of
a frond, so that the character of the fern cannot be fally described. It
probably represents the terminal part of a pinna, and consists of five
more or less alternately opposed pinnules, which are ovate and ob-
tusely pointed, with entire margins, and broadly adherent at their
base : there is no midrib ; the venation is anastomosing ; the areolae
are large and irregularly hexagonal, some elongate and parallel in
the middle of the pinnules, afterwards oblique and then free near
the margins ; there are no free veins within the areolae : in this latter
character it is similar to the genera above mentioned ; and this
feature is also foimd in some recent ferns, as in Litohrochia (L. 'pe-
data) and other genera.
Figs. 1 & 2, — Woodwardites ? Robertsi, from the Coal-measures
near Beiudley, Gloueester shire.
Fig. 1. — Portion of
the Frond.
Fig. 2. — Leaflet, magnified.
In the reticulate venation and the absence of a distinct midrib,
this fern is allied to Dictyopteris ; but in the general habit, mode of
venation, and broad decurrent base of the pinnules, it more closely
resembles those ferns referred by Goeppert to his genus Wood-
wardites (near to Lonchopteris, Brongn.), and, with the exception of

• Enum. Filic. Hort. Kew. 1846. See also his useful Catalogue of Cultivated