[Illustration: FIG. 188. _Lepidostrobus._ Middle Coal-Measures, Bardsley, Lancashire. From a specimen in the Manchester Museum. (½ nat. size.)] There can be little doubt that the Palaeozoic _Lepidodendra_, like _Lycopodium cernuum_ (fig. 123) and other recent Lycopods, usually bore their cones at the tips of slender shoots. The fertile shoot of _Lepidophloios scoticus_ shown in fig. 160, B, affords one of several instances supporting this statement; similar examples are figured by Brongniart[410], Morris[411], and by more recent writers. The apparently sessile cone figured by Williamson[412] from a specimen in the Manchester Museum is certainly not _in situ_, but is accidentally associated with the stem. The general absence of secondary wood in the steles of _Lepidostrobi_ is, as Dr Kidston[413] points out, consistent with the view that the cones were shed on maturity and that fertilisation probably took place on the ground, or perhaps on the surface of the water where the slender hairs of the megaspores (fig. 191, F, I) may have served to catch the microspores. [Illustration: FIG. 189. _Lepidostrobus._ Section through the apical region of a cone above the axis. (Manchester University Collection.)] Fig. 189 is an accurate representation of a transverse section, 6 mm. in diameter, of what is no doubt the apical portion of a _Lepidostrobus_ from the Coal-Measures of Shore, Lancashire. The section cuts across the upturned free laminae above the level of the apex of the cone-axis. Each lamina contains a small vascular bundle composed of a few tracheae and some thin-walled cells surrounded by delicate mesophyll tissue. Immediately in front of the distal end of a sporangium a small ligule is borne on the upper face of the sporophyll (fig. 191, A, B, _l_) occupying the same position as in _Selaginella_ (cf. fig. 131, F). Strands of vascular tissue pass in a steeply ascending course from the xylem to the pedicels of sporophylls, finally curving upwards and ending in the upper limb. Each vascular bundle consists of a strand of xylem, apparently of mesarch structure, accompanied by a few layers of parenchyma on its outer face and by a group of cambiform elements, the whole being enclosed in a sheath of parenchyma continuous with the inner cortex of the cone axis. The vascular bundle is accompanied by a parichnos in the outer cortex and in the sporophyll. Reference has already been made to the belief on the part of some palaeobotanists that the large scars of _Ulodendron_ represent attachment-surfaces of sessile cones, and reasons have been given against the acceptance of this view. There is considerable range in the size of _Lepidostrobi_. An incomplete specimen, 33 cm. long and 6 cm. broad, which may have been 50 cm. in length, is described by Renault and Zeiller[414] from the Commentry Coal-field. The larger cones afford a striking demonstration of the enormous spore-output of some species of _Lepidodendron_.