In the "Bulletin of the Chicago Academy of Science," January, 1884, Dr. Johnson and Mr. Thomas, in their paper on the "Microscopic Organisms of the Boulder Clay of Chicago and Vicinity," notice _Sporangites Huronensis_ as among these organisms, and have discovered them also in large numbers in the precipitate from Chicago city water-supply. They refer them to the decomposition of the Erian shales, of which boulders filled with these organisms are of frequent occurrence in the Chicago clays. The Sporangites and their accompaniments in the boulder clay are noticed in a paper by Dr. G. M. Dawson, in the "Bulletin of the Chicago Academy," June, 1885. Prof. Clarke has also described, in the "American Journal of Science" for April, 1885, the forms already alluded to, and which he finds to consist of macrospores enclosed in sporocarps. He compares these with my _Sporangites Huronensis_ and _Protosalvinia bilobata_, but I think it is likely that one of them at least is a distinct species. I may add that in the "Geological Magazine" for 1875, Mr. Newton, F. G. S., of the Geological Survey of England, published a description of the Tasmanite and Australian white coal, in which he shows that the organisms in these deposits are similar to my _Sporangites Huronensis_, and to the macrospores previously described by Prof. Huxley, from the Better-bed coal. Mr. Newton does not seem to have been aware of my previous description of _Sporangites_, and proposes the name _Tasmanites punctatus_ for the Australian form. Here we have the remarkable fact that the waste macrospores, or larger spores of a species of Cryptogamous plant, occur dispersed in countless millions of tons through the shales of the Erian in Canada and the United States. No certain clue seemed to be afforded by all these observations as to the precise affinities of these widely distributed bodies; but this was furnished shortly after from an unexpected quarter. In March, 1883, Mr. Orville Derby, of the Geological Survey of Brazil, sent me specimens found in the Erian of that country, which seemed to throw a new light on the whole subject. These I described and pointed out their connection with _Sporangites_ at the meeting of the American Association at Minneapolis, in 1883, and subsequently published my notes respecting them in its proceedings, and in the "Canadian Record of Science."