On Fossil Plants from the Coal Formation of Cape Breton

Abstract

Since Mr. Lyell gave, in his ‘Travels in North America,’ a catalogue of the fossil plants occurring in the coal formation of Nova Scotia, I have received, through the kindness of Richard Brown, Esq., a fine collection from the Sydney coal-field. Cape Breton, including many species which are not in Mr. Lyell's list, and some which appear to be altogether new. As this collection also enables me to illustrate more satisfactorily the structure of some species which have hitherto been incompletely described, I have thought it might be worth while to lay before the Society some account of it, together with a few remarks on the geographical distribution of these extinct plants. 1. Neuropteris cordata , Brongn. This appears to be the most common Fern in the Sydney coal-field: most of the slabs of shale which I have seen from that locality contain fragments of it. The leaflets almost always occur separately, very seldom attached to the stalk, and they vary to an extraordinary degree both in shape and size, so that this species might deserve the name of heterophylla quite as much as the plant to which it has been applied. Dr. Lindley* and Prof. Goeppert have noticed the small, roundish leaflets which are commonly found scattered among those of the more normal form of this species; but neither of them appears to have actually seen the relative position and connexion of the two kinds of leaflets; and Goeppert seems uncertain whether they belong to the same plant. Some of