﻿PRESERVATION AND EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. 43 



of cycad 164, firmly attaching themselves and nearly completing the group, the 

 missing parts being half of the main branch (stem No. 2), with one of the secondary 

 branches projecting from it. Two years later, however, I had the great good fortune 

 to secure this important missing portion, cycad 739. The entire specimen, now 

 among the handsomest ever discovered, is therefore, barring the minor defacement 

 of several of the crowns as mentioned above, practically complete after having been 

 received mainly in fragments not originally collected as belonging to the same plant, 

 these having arrived at the Yale Museum at different times during a period of four 

 years, thus happily completing a record of fortunate chance almost unparalleled. 



Cycadeoidea superba (plates ix-xi). — The type of this species is one of the 

 handsomest of all branching cycads, but, as in the previous instance, was not at once 

 obtained entire. Three only of its five branches, bearing the numbers 137, 146, and 

 147 of the Yale collection, were at first received as isolated specimens, and upon these 

 the species was based. While it was quite obvious from the close similarity of gen- 

 eral characters and preservation that these three specimens had grown in the same 

 group, their exact relation to each other was not clear. In the absence of interven- 

 ing parts, Professor Ward thought they represented separate trunks which had grown 

 close together in an appressed position (179), but they now prove to have sprung 

 from an original single woody cylinder, and thus to have strong organic attachment. 

 On my first visit to Minnekahta I was much gratified to find still embedded in situ 

 in sandrock two other large branches and many more or less freshly broken frag- 

 ments, which I at once recognized as belonging to the branches first described by 

 Professor Ward. The hope that these additional portions might be matched and 

 form a complete trunk was fully realized. When unpacked in the Yale Museum all 

 were found to join solidly together and form, with the portions 137, 146, and 147, 

 a complete cycad, consisting of a large central stem and four closely appressed 

 basal branches of nearly equal size, the entire specimen being in many respects 

 the handsomest cycad trunk ever recovered. The base of this trunk is shown 

 by the lower photograph, plate xi, where it will be noted that the medulla has 

 increased greatly in size beyond what would be seen in a single trunk, and that 

 likewise the xylem zone has enlarged, being shared in by the four lateral branches, 

 much after the manner of the main first branch (a) of the preceding cycad. Evi- 

 dently these branches formed early in the life of the plant. The summit of the 

 older member of the group or axial trunk is preserved as a "crow's nest," doubtless 

 as the result of some beginning of apical decay. Hence it is possible that had this 

 plant continued to grow undisturbed the older central portion would have finally 

 disappeared, thus leaving the remaining parts quite separate and free to form root 

 systems and new branches of their own. In some such manner these plants might 

 even have occasionally propagated themselves without the intervention of seeds, 

 thus finally investing large areas by a continuous branching. As shown later, it is, 

 however, more likely that fructification was usually the culminant event closing the 

 activities of the individual plants. The general similarity in form of these fossils to 

 the specimens of Cycas revoluta shown in figures 8 and 9 is so obvious as to require 

 no further present comment. 



