﻿12 INTRODUCTORY. 



EUROPEAN CYCADS. 

 DISCOVERY OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES. 



No study of American forms or enumeration of horizons and localities can be 

 satisfactory without some similar consideration of European forms. As will further 

 appear in this volume, and as was first definitely pointed out by the present writer 

 (199), there is an exceedingly close agreement between the cycads of North America 

 and of Europe. Indeed, many of the American species are so entirely analogous to 

 European forms in appearance and features of preservation, structure, and fructifica- 

 tion, that as knowledge of the subject increases not a few of the former may prove 

 identical with the latter, or be better held as merely subspecies of earlier described 

 European cycads. The reverse, I strongly suspect, may also prove true in several 

 instances. Compare, for instance, the Italian Cycadeoidea Masseiana Capellini &; 

 Solms with Cycadeoidea nigra Ward from Colorado (178, plate lviii, and 178, 

 plate Lxviii, respectively), and both with the very similar and earlier proposed 

 species C. Uhleri from Maryland (174). In any case the close agreement already 

 observed is a fact of much importance in all considerations of plant distribution in 

 the Mesozoic, although it can not as yet be accepted as final evidence of the wholly 

 synchronous existence of these highly specialized forms on both continents. Such 

 being the fact, a brief catalogue of European forms and an account of Cycad dis- 

 coveries in Europe is at once a matter of convenience and of importance to students, 

 although it is of course beyond the scope of the present purely biologic study to 

 attempt any extended comparison of species considered simply as such, this being 

 necessarily deferred to a future time. It is only intended at present to give prom- 

 inence to discoveries of distinct historic interest or of fundamental importance in the 

 development of our knowledge of the distribution and structure of the Cyeadeoideae. 



Italy. — Historically speaking, the cycads of Italy may well receive mention 

 before those of any other country ; for a peculiar interest clusters especially around 

 Cycadeoidea etrusca. Placed with vases and other objects of superstitious reverence 

 on one of the sepulchral chambers of the ancient Necropolis at Marzabotto by the 

 Etruscans more than four thousand years ago, this fine trunk was refound in 1867 

 and later described by Capellini & Solms (22). It will also be remembered as the 

 first trunk which afforded any clue to the probable position of the male inflorescence 

 in the Cyeadeoideae, one of its fructifications having afforded quite distinct pollen 

 grains scattered through the imperfectly conserved tissues surrounding a young 

 laterally borne ovulate inflorescence. This specimen is now in the geological 

 museum at Bologna. 



Again, in 1753 an Italian named Monti described a small cycadean trunk as 

 a congeries of barnacles, naming it Lapideorum balanorum congeries insignis! 

 Although the original specimen has been unfortunately lost, Capellini, on the basis 

 of Monti's excellent figure, happily redescribed it a few years since as Cycadeoidea 

 Montiana (22). Furthermore, during the past seventy-five years the types on which 

 are based a dozen additional species of silicified Cycadeoidean trunks have been 

 secured from the "scaly clays," as enumerated below. 



