﻿14 INTRODUCTORY. 



of fructification enables us to interpret with precision a long series of fossil casts 

 and imprints, which must in the absence of such knowledge have remained wholly 

 problematical. (See plates xlvi and xlvii.) 



England. — English horizons, more distinctly perhaps than in the case of those 

 of any other European country, have mainly afforded the types upon which our 

 earlier knowledge of the Cycadeoidete has rested. The first cycadean trunks from 

 England to receive mention were those obtained from the Wealden sandstones of 

 the Tilgate Forest by Mantell, and described by him in 1822 as fragments of stems 

 "composed of a cylindrical imbricated axis, marked with interrupted longitudinal 

 stricc, and a cortical layer covered externally with rhomboidal markings.''''* I have 

 italicized Mantell's statement, for this description of the outside appearance of 

 these fossils is exact, however wide of the mark his supposition that they might 

 be ferns, palms, or even Euphorbiacese. Their true nature was, however, soon 

 discerned by Presl, who in 1825 placed them in their proper position with, as Car- 

 ruthers says, "remarkable discrimination." They are structureless casts of pith, 

 cortical surfaces, and leaf bases, said to be of two types. Bucklandia anomala 

 (Stokes & Webb) is the type of Presl's genus, and the other species referred to it 

 are doubtful. Bucklandia was supposed by Carmthers (24) to represent forms allied 

 to the living Cycas, on the ground that there was some evidence of a zonal distribu- 

 tion of the leaf bases which might be accounted for, as in Cycas, by the successional 

 appearance of foliage leaves, scale leaves, and carpels, all borne on the same trunk. 

 Should the types, however, ultimately prove to be related to those upon which the 

 genus Cycadeoidea is founded, as may w y ell be the fact, the latter name might have 

 to be abandoned. 



The second series of English trunks brought to light were the far more strik- 

 ing forms from the Oolite quarries of the Isle of Portland, mentioned under the 

 generic name of Cycadeoidea by Buckland, in 1827 (16), and more fully described 

 by him in 1828 (17). To these specimens belongs the distinction of having 

 been the first to receive a fairly adequate scientific description. Concerning their 

 classification, Professor Ward says : 



" I may remark that Buckland, in studying for the first time the fossil trunks from 

 the Purbeck beds of the Portland quarries, called to his assistance the great contem- 

 porary botanist, Robert Brown, whom he expressly credits with the suggestion that 

 the differences between the fossil and living forms are sufficient to establish a new 

 family, distinct from the existing family of Cycadese, and to which the name Cyeade- 

 oidese was given. The generic name Cycadeoidea was also employed at the same time, 

 but it afterwards transpired that this was not approved by Robert Brown, who only 

 proposed the family name. Brown must therefore be credited with the name Cyca- 

 deoidea, and Buckland with Cycadeoidea. The wisdom of Brown's suggestion has been 

 abundantly vindicated by the subsequent study of these forms, and the more their 

 internal anatomy is made known, especially the nature of their inflorescence and fruc- 

 tification, the clearer it becomes that all fossil cycadean vegetation from beds below 

 the Tertiary represented a group distinct from the recent Cycadacese." (174). 



* Mantell, Geology of Sussex, The Fossils of the South Downs, |pp. 42, 43. 



