Lesquereux.]

[April 4, On a Branch of Cordaites, bearing Fruit, By Leo Lesquereux. Plate 1.

(Read before the American Philosophical Society, April 4th, 1879.)

In a former paper, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. March, 1868, I have given an account of the great work of Grand'Eury, especially considering his researches on the Cordaites.

Recent discoveries in the American Coal fields have afforded the means, not only of judging the value and the importance of the facts considered by the French author and of confirming his conclusions, but have also exposed in a new light some peculiar characters of these remarkable plants.

In considering the fruits of Cordaites (Cordaicarpus), p. 327, of the paper, it is remarked on Antholites or flowers of Cor daites, that except small nutlets, figured by Newberry, Dawson and Grand'Eury, and others, none of the large fruits commonly found in the Coal Measures have been found attached to stems or branches of Cordaites, nor indeed to any other kind of coal plants. Nutlets of Antholites are not even as large as peas, while the fruits of Cordaites, as Grand'Eury has figured them and as they are also represented, Pl. LXXXIII of the U. S. Coal flora,* vary in diameter from one to two and a half centimeters and therefore are, by their size, without correlation to those fixed upon branches of Antholites. Admitting as proved that these large nuts are derived from Cordaites, the question has been left by Grand' Eury what it was before for all the phyto-paleontologists from the oldest, who like Sternberg have considered the matter already, to those of our time. What is the relation of these fruits to the plants, their position, the mode of attachment, on stems, on branches, isolated and axillary, or in racemes, etc.? This question could be answered only by the discovery of a distinctly characteristic fragment of a Cordaites with the fructifications attached to it. It is to record that discovery, due to the persevering researches of Mr. I. F. Mansfield, who has done so much by systematic explorations in his coal bank of Cannelton, Pa., to promote the interest of the American coal flora, that I write this short notice.

The specimen bearing the vegetable remains is a piece of hard black shale, so appropriately split in the plan of stratification that it exposes both the upper face of the vegetable fragment and the counterpart. It represents a branch of Cordaites costatus (species figured U. S. Coal flora, Pl. LXXX, f. 1-3,), twelve centimeters long, bending down or like pending, nearly fifteen millimeters broad, marked in its whole length by prominent, kidney-shaped bolsters, support of pedicels or leaves, placed in spiral order, in the three ranked arrangement, enlarged, inflated in the upper part and abrubtly narrowed into a flexuous linear, lanceolate, long base. The nut or fruit is oval, three centimeters long from the point of attachment to the obtuse top, twenty-three millimeters broad, including its inflated border (three millimeters), broadly obtuse and entire at the top, rounded and narrowed at the base to a point of attachment or very short * Published by the Second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania, 1879.

1879.]

[Lesquereux. pedicel, five millimeters broad, distinctly joining the rounded subtruncate apex of one of the bolsters. The dividing of the shale in exposing and detaching the upper side of the fruit distinctly shows its mode of attachment by the continuity of the pedicel to the top of one of the bolsters.

The Plate I represents: Fig. 1, the fossilized part of the branch transformed into shining cannel coal. It is flattened to about two millimeters in thickness, the bolsters and their elongated base are in relievo. In the counterpart, fig. 2, the bolsters, concave and marked especially by the projections of the borders, are a little enlarged by compression. The part e is broken, as is also the base of the fruit in d. But the counterpart, fig. 2, has the impression of the whole fruit with its outside envelope, and the base is seen fixed upon the top of one of the bolsters, or rather of its impression in e.

This diagnosis and the figure of this branch of Cordaites, explain the position of the fruits as placed in spiral around a narrow branch, in a kind of long strobile. The close position of the bolster, serving as a support, and narrower than the fruits, at least when in maturity, could not allow them to remain upon the stem even until entirely ripe. They were forced out and soon falling off. They do not appear to have been axillary, for the bolsters do not bear any scar indicating the position of a leaf of Cordaites under the points of attachment of the fruits. The flowers were monoecious, even perhaps dioecious. A branch of the same species, C. costatus, figured Pl. LVIII, fig. 1, 1b, of the U. S. flora, bears racemes of male flowers whose pedicel is too slender for the axis of a strobile. The fertile flowers were in separate racemes, either on different trees or pending from another part of the same tree.

The discussion on the systematic relation of the Cordaites finds its place in the U. S. Coal flora. I will merely remark now that the position of these fruits in a kind of agglomeration in loose strobile, is comparable to the fruitifications of Cycadeæ, rather than to those of Conifers.

The Gingko, it is true, has nutlets resembling the fossil fruits by their shape. They are, however, much smaller, supported by a basilar cupuliform disk, with longer axillary fasciculate pedicels. Separate fruits of Cycadeæ have the size and form of the Cordaicarpes. Compare among many others, Cycadosperum sulcatum, in Heer, fl. Helv., IV, Pl. LVI, fig. 18-20 of the Jurassic.

I do not suppose, however, that the Cordaites are positively referable to Cycades. They had compound characters, which have been later separated and diversely distributed in other vegetable tribes. They constitute therefore a peculiar separate group with analogies of various kinds. We find the same in the ferns of the coal, of which the multiplied references made to genera of our time, have proved a series of failures especially considering the fructifications. It is the same also with the Lycopodiacea as represented by Lepidophlois; with the Sigillaria, the Calamodendræ, Asterophyllites, Sphenophyllum, Annularia and others.

Columbus, 22d March, 1879.

Chase.]

[April 4,

Solar Records. By Pliny Earle Chase, LL.D., Professor of Philosophy in Haverford College.

(Read before the American Philosophical Society, April 4, 1879.)

I. Harmonies of Lockyer's "Basic Lines.”

From the third law of motion it follows, as a necessary consequence, that cosmical and molecular bodies act and react upon one another in accordance with laws of perfect elasticity. Hence, by introducing formulas of undulatory motion, results can often be speedily reached which would, otherwise, require the use of long and difficult analytical processes. In previous communications I have shown:

1. That some of the most striking indications of nodal aggregation in the planetary system, are connected, by the laws which govern the relations between density and altitude in elastic atmospheres, with the nodal indications of the Fraunhofer lines.*

2. That the collisions of subsiding particles, from opposite diametral extremities of a condensing spherical nebula, tend to form shells or rings of nodal aggregation, at of the radial distance from the centre of the nebula.t

3. That centres of linear and of spherical oscillation, exert an important influence, both upon molar and upon molecular arrangements. Professor Stephen Alexander had previously pointed out some instances of the results of spherical oscillation in the solar system.

4. That the nodal resistance of large cosmical bodies tends to form other nodal aggregations, at harmonic intervals, in accordance with the laws of musical rhythm which govern the vibrations of elastic media. §

5. That there are reasons for anticipating, in the fundamental oscillations of terrestrial elementary bodies, symmetrical harmonic evidences of the same laws as govern the harmonic nodes of elastic media and the harmonic grouping of planetary systems.

I have also shown, both from independent considerations and as corollaries from the foregoing laws :

6. That in paraboloidal aggregation, there are three wave systems, with tendencies to nodal collisions and orbital aggregations in which the major axes have successive differences of 4 x。.

*Ante, xvii, 109, sq.; 1877: 294, sq; 1878.

† Ib. xvii. 100; 1877.

Ib, x, 103; 1869.: xiii, 140 sq.; 1873.

xlii., 140, 193, 237; 1873,

| Ib., xii., 392 sq.; 1872.

Ib., xvi, 507; 1877.