108 FLOEES. 



V. 2825. Flattened and subspherical body, with a hard shiny 

 and dark brown skin more or less deeply indented. Cf. 

 Carruther's figures of Oolithes, sp. 



V. 2828. Specimens showing a similar brown skin, enclosing 

 a smooth central kernel. 



V. 2817. Small specimen with smooth surface, showing at 

 the two opposite ends of a diameter a number of very small 

 rounded prominences; these are just visible, as small dots, to 

 the naked eye. 



V. 2817(7. Small body, 5 mm. long, with smooth brown coat, 

 similar to V. 2796, etc. V. 2165, fragment. Ecclesbourne. 



Ruffonl Coll. 



FLORES. 



In Solms-Laubach's Fossil Botany? we have a concise and 

 critical resume of the various male and female cycadean flowers 

 described in palseobotanical literature prior to 1887. It will 

 be seen from this account, that our knowledge of the floral 

 structures of fossil cycadean plants is extremely meagre. In 

 the carpophylls of the recent Cycas, we have a well-marked 

 and peculiar form of female flower which is readily distinguished 

 from the cone-like collection of carpophylls met with in other 

 genera ; occasionally these Cycas forms of flowers have been 

 found in close association with the sterile fronds of Ct/cadites, 

 and justify the conclusion that both structures formed parts of 

 the same plant. In other cases, however, we are less fortunate 

 in the records of staminal or carpellary leaves, and there must 

 be considerable hesitation in accepting several of the examples 

 which have been described as true cycadean flowers. 



It will be convenient to adopt Schimper's genus Andro&trobus 

 in speaking of a few Wealden specimens, of what appear to be 

 male flowers of some genus of cycadean plant. 



1 Solms-Laubach (A.), p. 89. 



