RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 233 



botanists, and how the geologic indications of environment 

 and other evidence assists a competent palaeobotanist to form 

 useful judgments. In this work over 300 species of this 

 Wilcox flora were described, and it is therefore one of the 

 largest fossil floras known from any single area. Berry elabor- 

 ately compared this flora with the known floras of similar and 

 neighbouring age, and thus throws into prominence the lament- 

 able neglect of our own Tertiary floras. As Berry said, " No 

 richly fossiliferous European plant horizons exactly equivalent 

 to the Wilcox have as yet received monographic study. The 

 Eocene of the south of England is rich in fossil plants at hori- 

 zons that I consider equivalent to the Wilcox, but comparisons 

 are unfortunately limited to the long lists of nomina nuda 

 published by Ettingshausen," — because our British collections 

 have never yet been described. 



In the U.S. Geol. Surv. Profess, papers 98 E and F, Berry 

 considered the physical conditions indicated by the fossil 

 floras of the Alum Bluff and the Calvert formations, the latter 

 represented by a small flora present in diatomaceous beds of 

 Miocene age. 



Family Histories and Anatomy. — To the Angiosperms have 

 been added many species and records in the Tertiary papers 

 referred to above. Papers dealing with particular members 

 of the angiospermic family were few in 1916. Nagel is reported 

 to have published a monograph on the Betulaceae in the 

 Fossilium Catalogus, Berlin, but I have not been able to see 

 a copy. Berry contributed one or two semi-popular papers 

 on angiosperms, and also recorded a Tertiary Nutmeg from 

 Texas (Amer. Journ. Sci. vol. xlii. pp. 241-5) represented by 

 its pericarps in sandstone. The same author described a new 

 species of petrified palmwood [Amer. Journ. Sci. vol. xli. 

 pp. 193-7) which, being of Cliffwood (Cretaceous) age, is one 

 of the few really early records of this family. 



The Higher Gymnosperms. — Stopes described (Ann. Bot. 

 vol. xxx. pp. 1 1 1-25, pi. IV.) a new well-petrified Cretaceous 

 wood which showed the medullary ray pitting and wall thicken- 

 ing characteristic of the Abietinese, while the tracheids had the 

 typical multiseriate pits of the Araucarinese. A new genus, 

 Planoxylon, was founded for this fossil, which came from New 

 Zealand and is particularly interesting as an Australasian record 

 because no living forms with abietinean ray structures are 



