488 DR. MARIE STOPES ON BENNETTITES SCOTTI, 
show no peculiarity, but the epidermis with its thick cuticles and attached 
hairs is particularly well preserved. As the details of these structures have 
not been described for the already known species they are worth a few 
words in the present instance. In B. Gibsonianus the limiting layer of the 
leaf-base is described as “something in the nature of cork,” and sections 
of the original type specimen in the British Museum show this corky layer. 
A thick cork layer has been more minutely deseribed for the leaf-bases of 
C. gigantea by Seward (1897). The leaf-bases of the new species now 
described are still in the young condition, covered by the original epidermis. 
This has a very thick cuticle which forms a noticeable band of colour in the 
sections. One corner of one of the leaf-bases (in slide m) has begun to 
develop a multi-layered cork, and in other parts of the same leaf-base the 
epidermis with its thick cuticle is conspicuous. 
The colour of the general petrifaction of the tissues ranges from a greyish 
to a vandyke brown, but the cuticle stands out from this as a clear, vivid 
golden-brown colour, remarkably like the cuticle of a living Cycas. It is 
not unlikely, indeed recent work in another field (see Stopes & Wheeler, 
1918) causes me to think it highly probable, that here we are looking not at 
the mineral replacement of the cuticle, but at the actual cuticle itself, thougn 
the specimen is completely embedded in a mineral matrix as is usual in 
petrifactions. The cuticle is best seen in the lower regions of the leaf-bases, 
where it is less frequently broken by ramental attachments than it is in the 
upper regions where ramenta are so thickly crowded that the epidermis can 
searcely be distinguished. 
Several structures which look like stomates are to be seen in the leaf- 
bases, but these may be tangential cuts through the bases of ramental 
attachments. 
The cork layer extends only so far as the acute corner on one side of a leaf- 
base, and though it is there about 18 cells thick, it abruptly comes to an end 
and the rest of the leaf-base, including the other corner, is still covered by 
the original epidermis and cuticle, with here and there a cell or two dividing. 
In one place the division to form the first cells of the cork cambium is 
particularly clear, and shows that the cork eambium of the leaf-base is 
epidermal in origin (see text-fig. 2) and thus differs from that of € . gigantea, 
which is described from much older leaf-bases as being sub-epidermal ii 
origin (Seward, 1897, p. 28). 
The ramenta are particularly numerous on the upper parts of the leaf- 
bases, where they are so crowded and are packed so closely together that 
they form *false-leaf-bases" which appear to the naked eye in sections 
exactly like true leaf-bases, as they are of the size and shape and have the 
same arrangement as the latter. This was illustrated by Wieland (1900, 
pl. 19, text-fig. 52) for his American species. The present specimen shows 
this iito beautifully, and also makes clear an interesting point, that in 
