The Medals of Creation, Volumes 1 and 2: First Lessons in Geology and the Study of Organic RemainsMantell, Gideon Algernon
Science
The Medals of Creation, Volumes 1 and 2: First Lessons in Geology and the Study of Organic Remains
Mantell, Gideon Algernon
Geology -- England -- Guidebooks; Paleontology
Neither the leaves nor the fruit are known: a cone found in the
Dirt-bed of Portland, and attributed to these plants, appears to belong
to the coniferæ of the petrified forest. Examples of Mantelliæ have
been found in the quarry of Portland-stone at Swindon, Wilts.
[Sidenote: CLATHRARIA LYELLII.]
[Illustration: Lign. 52. Clathraria Lyellii.
_Wealden._
A branched example of the inner axis: the original 3-1/2 feet high.]
Clathraria[133] Lyellii. _Lign. 52-57._--The fossil plants to which I
would next direct attention were first discovered by me in the Wealden
strata of Sussex, in 1820, and were figured and described under the
name they still bear, in my Fossils of Tilgate Forest, in 1827. The
specimens figured in that work are the most illustrative hitherto
discovered, with but one exception.[134]
[133] EC C
lathraria, _i.e._ _lattice stem_, from the scars left by the
petioles.
[134] They are now in the British Museum; see Petrifactions, p. 45.
_Room_ I. _Case_ E.
From the imperfect state of the remains of these plants, the structure
and affinities of the originals were very ambiguous, and the fossils
have been placed by some eminent botanists with the Liliaceæ, and by
others with the Asphodeleæ; their true botanical position is doubtless
with the Cycadaceæ; for in some points they resemble the Zamiæ, in
others the Cycadeæ.
The stem of the Clathraria is composed of a solid internal axis, the
surface of which is covered with reticulated fibres; the large branched
specimen of this part, figured in _Lign. 52_, is the finest example
hitherto obtained: it was discovered, with bones of the Iguanodon,
in a quarry near Cuckfield, Sussex, in 1820. The axis is invested
with a very thick false-bark, formed of the consolidated bases of the
leaf-stalks, the insertions of which are rhomboidal and transverse.
The outer surface of the bark is consequently marked with elevated
lozenge-shaped cicatrices (_Lign. 53_), separated from each other by a
marginal furrow, which is surrounded by a parallel ridge or band of a
fibrous structure.
[Illustration: Lign. 53. Clathraria Lyellii.
1/4 _nat._
A stem, with rhomboidal transverse scars, left by the petioles; broken
transversely and separated, to show the internal axis at _a_, which,
if the pieces were united, would be received in the cavity below the
depression, or cicatrix, on the middle of the upper portion, _b_, was
probably the situation of a resinous secretion, like the dragon-blood
in the Dracæna.]
The cortical zone is generally converted into a cylinder of stone,
which in some examples separates from the axis. In a beautiful specimen
of this kind, _Lign. 54_, the axis projects and is surrounded by the
false-bark.
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