Societies and Academies

Abstract

LONDONRoyal Society, March 7.—“On the organisation of the Fossil Plants of the Coal-measures.—Part III. Lycopodiacece.” By Prof. W. C. Williamson, F.R.S. An outline of the subject of this memoir has already been published in the Proceedings in a letter to Dr. Sharpey. In a former memoir the author described the structure of a series of Lepidodendroid stems, apparently belonging to different genera and species. He now describes a very similar series, but all of which, there is strong reason for believing, belong to the same plant, of which the structure has varied at different stages of its growth. The specimens were obtained from some thin fossihferous deposits discovered by Mr. G. Grieve, of Burntisland, in Fifeshire, where they occur imbedded in igneous rocks. The examples vary from the very youngest half-developed twigs, not more than 11/2 th of an inch in diameter, to arborescent stems having a circumference of from two to three feet. The youngest twigs are composed of ordinary parenchyma, and the imperfectly developed leaves which clothe them externally have the same structure. In the interior of the twig there is a single bundle, consisting of a limited number of barred vessels. In the centre of the bundle there can always be detected a small amount of primitive cellular tissue, which is a rudimentary pith. As the twig expanded into a branch, this central pith enlarged by multiplication of its cells, and the vascular bundle in like manner increased in size through a corresponding increase in the number of its vessels. The latter structure thus became converted into the vascular cylinder so common amongst Lepidodendroid plants, in transverse sections of which the vessels do not appear arranged in radiating series. Simultaneously with these changes the thick parenchymatous outer layer becomes differentiated. At first but two layers can be distinguished — a thin inner one, in which the cells have square ends, and are disposed in irregular vertical columns, and a thick outer one consisting of parenchyma, the same as the epidermal layer of the author's preceding memoir. In a short time a third layer was developed between these two.