Meaozoic Coal Strata.} I'AL^ONTOLOGY OF VICTORIA. [Plants. 



plant so closely related to the Z. ellipticus tliat I cannot help 

 suspecting an affinity, in.which the rachis or stalk is hipinuate, and 

 the leaflets resemble those of Podozamia or Bowenia among the 

 Cycads, but are apparently here and there in four rows, just as com- 

 pletely resembling the bipinnate branches and leaves of the Austra- 

 lian form of Araucaria, the A. Bidwi/li, or bunya-bunya, in which 

 the leaves differ from those of the American Araucarice in being- 

 contracted at base to a narrow petiole, and, in greater part of the 

 branches, being in two rows, and having the shape, texture, ridging, 

 and striation of the Bowenia and other Cycads, but hei*e and there 

 (like the fossils I allude to) showing by occasional four rows of 

 leaflets (or at least one leaflet appearing in some irregular intervals 

 between the ordinary two rows lying in one plane, as in the 

 foliage of the Cycads) that the distichous appearance is due to a 

 s])iral arrangement, the successive leaves of which appear just on 

 opposite sides of a branch at intervals generally of 180°, but 

 occasionally separated by only 90° ; and as in the fossil which I 

 shall shortly figure the rachis is so thick and clumsy as to more 

 resemble a branch, I proj^ose the subgeneric term Bunyalites (from 

 the native name of the recent type) for these forms, which could 

 not be j^laced under the genus Araucarites, used by geologists for 

 fossils (allied to, if not identical with, the Lycopodites) having, like 

 the American living Araucarice^ the leaves thick, short, fleshy, 

 widest at base of attachment, carniated, and in several rows. It 

 is quite possible the Z. ellipticus may prove, on more perfect 

 specimens occumng, to have a similar structure as the thickness 

 of the rachis, or branch in that case, would lead us to susj^ect. 

 The fruit found with these remains are not sufficiently perfectly 

 preserved to determine their affinity with certainty, but they are 

 mvich more like in appeai'ance the fruit of the fossil Zamice of the 

 Yorkshire Oolites than the Araucarian type. Under any circum- 

 stance of the ultimate affinity of these Australian fossil plants 

 proving to be with one section or the other of the Gymnospcrma, 

 they are equally unlike any Palaeozoic types, and in one case as in 

 the other are entirely indicative rather of the more recent geolo- 

 gical periods, although impressed with so strong a local peculiarity 

 as to have no gi-eat resemblance to any species known elsewhere. 



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