16 ON GYMNOSPERMATOUS FRUITS 
it. The specimen figuredhas been an open cone, like the majority of 
those of P. Dunkeri, and in breaking the rounded nodule in which it 
occurred all the external characters have been lost. 
From the Lias of Lyme Kegis. 
1. Araucarites spharocarpus, PL LX. Fig. 1. Cone spherical. 
Scales rhomboidal, with a central ridge produced into a stout, some- 
what reflexed spine, and an obvious furrow dividing the scale into an 
upper and lower portion. Twenty to twenty-four scales in each spiral 
series in the centre of the cone — Araucaria spharocarpa, Car., Geol. 
Mag. hi. p. 350. 
From the Inferior Oolite, Bruton, Somersetshire. 
The only specimen of A. spJuerocarpa yet found (Plate LX.) was 
obtained from a bed of marine limestone. It is noticed by Sir Charles 
Lyell in the last edition of his ' Elements,' where a woodcut is given, 
but without any description. The detached cone has been floated out 
to sea, where, having sunk, it has been partially buried in the cal- 
careous mud among the remains of Serpidce and Mollnsca. The 
spaces between the scales have first been filled with calcareous matter, 
shown in the figure by the irregular white lines separating the scales. 
The organism having decayed, the upper portion is entirely lost; but 
calcareous mud having been deposited in the mould of the buried por- 
tion a remarkably perfect impression of that half of the cone remains. 
The base is imperfect. ; the two or three series of basal scales, which 
are more or less triangular in outline, are wanting. There is no indi- 
cation of any stalk. The draughtsman of the woodcut in Lyell's 
1 Elements ' lias mistaken a fragment of a shell for the stalk, and has 
given, in his restoration, an aspect to the cone unlike any known 
Araucaria. The upper portion of the cone is more perfect, and 
exhibits the change in the form of the scales observed in recent cones. 
(Compare Plate LX. Fig. 5, one of the apical scales, with Fig. 6, a 
similar scale, from the cone of A. BidwilU, Hook.) The fossil is five 
inchas long, and as many inches broad at its widest part. The apex 
of the scale is a rhomboid. It is divided into two unequal portions 
by a transverse scar; the lower and larger half has been furnished 
with a strong and somewhat reflexed spine. A fracture in two of the 
scales en the upper left-hand portion of the fossil, figured of the na- 
tural size at Fig. 5, shows that the sear is superficial, and that each 
scale supports a single seed. ■ 
