218 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MVSEUM. 



Seward docs not state tlie weijilit of liis si)e(!iinen, but if the material 

 at all resembles that of all other cycads from those quarries its specific 

 .gravity is low and the weight would be small in relation to the bulk. 

 He states the girth of the specimen at 107 cm., while that of G.jcnncyana 

 is very nearly l.'iO cm. More exactly, the lower piece, measured at the 

 middle, is 129.54 cm., while the upper piece, both at the lower end and 

 at the middle, measures 107 cm. The ditterence, as explained above, is 

 cliieHy due to erosion of the surface of the latter. The lower piece 

 weighs 95.26 kg. and the upper, 80.18 kg., a total of 181.44 kg. The 

 entire trunk must therefore have weighed nearly 250 kg., which would 

 have given it the third rank, from this point of view, among the fossil 

 cycads of the world. 



The question whether there are any other specimens in our collection 

 that belong to the same species is a more dillicult one. In 1803 I vis- 

 ited the si)ot where the large trunks were originally found. I was 

 acconj])anied by Professor and Mrs. .lenney, and we took with us as 

 our guide Mr. Gilbert Getchcll, of Rapid City, who said he helped load 

 the specimens into the wngcm in 1876, in company with Mr. Leedy, who 

 had discovered them some time earlier, but who was no longer in those 

 parts. Mr. Getchell showed us the locality, on the ranch of a Mr. 

 Black, 2h miles north of BlackhawU. No other fragments were found 

 by any of our party, although we all searched diligently for several 

 hours and collected a large amount of silicified wood. We were told 

 at the ranch that a man named McBride (not Professor Mcl>ride, of 

 course) had been in the region and had gathered and taken away all 

 the specimens he could tind. 



Later in the summer, when I was in California, Professor Jenney 

 learned the whereabouts of Mr. McBride, who was then in Deadwood, 

 and i)urchased two fragments of cycads from him that he said came 

 from that locality. He also purchased two other fragments from a man 

 named Stillwell, in Deadwood, also as he was informed, from the same 

 place. All these he sent to Washington, and they constitute a part of 

 the cycad collections in my hands. 



Upon careful examination of all four of these fragments I conclude 

 that there is nothing to negative the supposition that three of them 

 belong to the same species as the large trunks, and 1 have accordingly 

 included them under Cycadeoidea jenncyana. They were numbered in 

 the collection as: McBride Fragments, Nos. 1 and 2, and Stillwell Frag- 

 ment, No. 1. 



These fragments are irregular and not well preserved, but they evi- 

 dently came from large trunks, and all the characters that they show 

 agree substantially with those of this species. As they come from the 

 same locality, and as a portion of the great trunk is missing, I have 

 examined them carefully to see whether they might possibly belong to 

 that trunk, but I find no evidence of this. These fragments weigh, 

 respectively, 12.25, 11.34, and 7.26 kg. 



