﻿THE SEEDS OF ANEIMITES 1 

 By DAVID WHITE 



In the spring of 1900, while studying some of the collections of 

 fossil plants from the lower Pottsville formations of the Virginian 

 region, I was more than surprised at finding among the fossils from 

 one locality numerous examples of a small fruit, which I had pre- 

 viously regarded as a new gymnospermic genus, attached by pedicels 

 to rhachial fragments that, on account of their organic union with 

 sterile pinnules, can not be regarded otherwise than as belonging to 

 the fern genus commonly known as Adiantites. Detached speci- 

 mens of these fruits had been found at a number of localities, and, on 

 account of their external characters and their evidently deciduous 

 habit, no question had arisen in my mind as to their seed nature. It 

 had indeed been noticed that they were intimately associated with 

 Adiantites foliage, but I was then quite unprepared to recognize them 

 at once both as seeds and as belonging to fronds whose fern nature 

 had hitherto been unquestioned. 



At that time the sterile fragments and the correlated fruits were 

 fully treated in my manuscript, in preparation, on the Pottsville 

 floras, the name Wardia being given to the generic type of fructifica- 

 tion. But, appreciating the gravity and the far-reaching importance 

 of attributing seeds to a long established Paleozoic genus whose 

 every character was pteridophytic, I postponed all special publication 

 of the matter in the hope that further study in the course of the 

 elaboration of the collections from hundreds of Pottsville localities 

 would yield cumulative evidence bearing either on the internal organ- 

 ization of the fruits or on the structure of the fronds. The segrega- 

 tion as " Cycadofilices " of a number of types, principally stems and 

 petioles, combining certain filicate and gymnospermic. particularly 

 Cycadean, characters of structure, had already been established by 

 Potonie, 2 and representatives of the sterile-frond genera Sphenop- 

 tcris, Neuropteris, and Alethopteris had more or less definitely been 

 referred to the group ; but no type of fruit had been satisfactorily 

 correlated with any member of that group. 



1 Published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



2 Lehrbuch der PAancenpalaontologie, 1899, p. 160. 



322 



