PALEOBOTANY BERRY. 363 



dozen broad-leafed species ranging from Japan to the East Indies 

 and New Caledonia, is exceedingly abundant in the Lower Cretaceous 

 of North America, and is represented in the English Wealden and the 

 Asiatic Neocomian. It has also been recorded from the English 

 Jurassic and the Mcsozoic of New Zealand. 



Phyllocladus occurs throughout the Tertiary of Australia, and 

 various supposedly related genera such as Phyllocladites of Spitz- 

 bergen and Protophyllocladus of North America and Asia are pres- 

 ent in the Upper Cretaceous. Wood known as Phyllocladoxylon 

 has been described from strata as old as the Jurassic. 



The difliculty of correctly determining foliar specimens and the 

 lack of structural fossil material of this order leave much to be de- 

 sired in the knowledge of the geological history of the order, but 

 such information as is available can not safely be ignored by weavers 

 of phylogenetic hypotheses. 



The ordinal rank of the Araucariales, first clearly emphasized by 

 Seward and Ford, receives abundant confirmation from a considera- 

 tion of their organization and geological history. The difficulties of 

 homologizing their morphology with that of the Coniferales or Tax- 

 ales has led to endless discussion and to the hypothesis, previously 

 mentioned, of regarding them as independently derived from Lepido- 

 phytic ancestors. The existing forms, about fifteen in number, are 

 segregated into the large-leafed genus Dammara (Agathis) with 

 four or five species of the East Indian-New Zealand region, and 

 Araucaria with ten or twelve species of South America and the 

 Oriental region. They are dioecious and form large and complex 

 cones in which the morphological distinction of leaf and bract is 

 eliminated. The ovules are solitary and the pollen sacs are free 

 and pendulous. Features of the vascular anatomy made much of 

 by morphological speculators are the persistent leaf traces, the ab- 

 sence of resin canals, bars of Sanio, and wood parenchyma. The 

 tracheids are characterized by crowded alternating and often flat- 

 tened bordered pits, indistiguishable from those of the Cordaitales. 

 Foliage leaves only are present, there being no traces of the scale 

 leaves so characteristic of the Coniferales. 



The existence of a variety of Mesozoic genera which combine some 

 of the features of Araucarian vascular anatomy with Abietinaceous 

 characters and the cone and foliar habits of a variety of genera (Wid- 

 dringtonites, Brachyphyllum, Raritania, Thuites, Androvettia, Arau- 

 cariopitys, Woodworthia, etc.) has led some students to regard the 

 Araucariales as derived by reduction from the Abietiniaceae, which 

 are usually considered the most modern and specialized conifero- 

 phytes. This ingenious hypothesis entirely ignores the geological 

 record, and the cone and foliar habits of the forms, here regarded as 

 the more significant. 



