60 MESSRS. NEWELL ARBER AND J. PARKIN ON 
Saporta *, in 1871, referred Williamsonia to the Monocotyledons on the 
supposed similarity of the female portion of the strobilus to the fruit of 
certain Pandanaceze. In subsequent memoirs this author +, in conjunction 
with Marion, included the genus in a new class, the Proangiosperme:e, or 
primitive Angiosperms. Although the evidence for this attribution was then 
very imperfect, and the deduction by no means warranted or strictly accurate, 
yet Saporta, in our opinion, was perfectly correct in his happy guess as to the 
near affinities of this Mesozoic fossil. 
In 1880, Nathorst t came to the conclusion that the supposed fruits of the 
Bennettitee really represented parasitic plants analogous to the Balano- 
phoracez. 
Solms-Laubach’s $ conclusions have been already mentioned (р. 56). In 
the English translation (1891) of his * Fossil Botany,’ the following passage 
occurs :—* Tt is possible that the seed-stalks may prove to be carpophylls of a 
peculiar kind ; in that case we should be obliged to separate the Bennettitese 
altogether from the Cycadeæ, and to regard them as an intermediate group 
between Gymnosperms and Angiosperms.” 
Dr. Scott || remarked in his * Studies, published in 1900, that the fruit of 
Bennettites “comes very near to being angiospermous," but *only in the 
sense that the seeds were enclosed within a coherent pericarp.’ The same 
author concluded that “ the Bennettitese may well be called pro-angiosperms, 
to use Saporta’s name, if by that we simply mean to indicate plants with a 
near approach to angiospermous structure, without implying any relationship 
to the Class Angiosperms as now existing. On the present evidence such a 
relationship is altogether improbable." 
It must, however, be pointed out that it was only in 1901, or, more strictly 
speaking, during the last year, that the full evidence as to the fructification of 
Bennettites has become available, and consequently these conclusions, founded 
on imperfect material, could not be other than provisional. 
Wieland Ч] in 1901, when describing in a preliminary note the amphisporan- 
giate strobilus of Bennettites, emphasized the following suggestion, made in a 
previous communication : “ While the staminate disk surrounding the ovulate 
axis of Cycadeoidea indicates primarily an evolution ierminating, so far as 
now possible to trace, in the Gymnosperms, the juxtaposition of parts is 
exceedingly suggestive of the possibility, if not the manner as well, of angio- 
sperm development directly from pteridophytic forms. For in these strobili 
the sporophylls are organized into а flower, . . . . . foreshadowing distinctly 
the characteristic angiospermous arrangement of stamens inserted on a 
shortened axis about an ovulate center, apieal and sometimes strobilar as 
seen in Liriodendron.” 
* Saporta (1875) p. 56. 
T Saporta & Marion (1885) vol. i. p. 246, and Saporta (1891) p. 87. 
$} Nathorst (1880). $ Solms-Laubach (1891) p. 97. 
| Scott (1900) pp. 462, 477, & 478, also p. 523. * Wieland (1901) p. 426. 
