Abstract
AT a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, held on October 20, Mr. Binney called in question some conclusions at which I had arrived and had published in Part II. of my memoirs on the Structure of the Coal Plants, respecting the organisation of Stigmaria. Mr. Binney further published an abstract of his remarks in Part II. of vol. xiv. of the Society's Proceedings. Believing that Mr. Binney's observations, if allowed to pass unnoticed, may mislead some palaeonto-logists unacquainted with Stigmaria, I feel called upon to reply to them through the same channel as that which he has employed for their promulgation. The general features of the plant known for half a century as Stigmaria ficoiies have been so well described by Lindley and Hutton, Dr. Hooker, Mr. Binney, and Brongniart, that no one familiar with those descriptions can fail to recognise it without difficulty. That plant consisted of a central medulla, surrounded by a cylinder of scalariform vessels arranged in radiating wedges, very distinctly separated by two kinds of medullary rays (primary and secondary), the whole being enclosed in a thick bark, from the surface of which spring numerous large cylindrical rootlets. The vascular cylinder gives off numerous large vascular bundles of scalariform vessels, which proceed outwards, through the conspicuous primary medullary rays, to reach the rootlets.
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On the Structure of Stigmaria * . Nature 11, 136–137 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/011136a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011136a0