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Sphenopteris, or "wedge-fern," is the name applied to another coal-fern; glossopteris, or "tongue-leaf"; cyclopteris, or "round-leaf"; odonlopteris, or "tooth-leaf," and many others, show their chief characteristics in the names which they individually bear. Alethopteris appears to have been the common brake of the coal-period, and in some respects resembles pecopteris. Sphenopteris Affinis.
The lower beds sometimes alternate with shales and coal: at Wolgan I found in carbonaceous shale leaves of the Glossopteris Brownii, a fern which so frequently accompanies the coal of Australia.
The seed-ferns die out, and a new and hardy type of fern, with compact leaves, the Glossopteris, spreads victoriously over the globe; from Australia it travels northward to Russia, which it reaches in the early Permian, and westward, across the southern continent, to South America.
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