158 BENNETTITES. 



twelve in number, and, as occurs so commonly in the Jurassic 

 Williamsonias, they are broken off basally, leaving an annular 

 area immediately surrounding the base. This annular area shows 

 very distinctly numerous parallel longitudinal striations ; these I 

 regard as corresponding to the so-called " antheriferous tissue" of 

 some writers in Williamsonia ffigas, Carr. At the base we have 

 a well-defined rim surrounding a central short and conical cavity 

 (Fig. 1#); a similar form of axis occupied by carbonaceous matter 

 occurs in the specimen represented in Fig. 8. Compare also Saporta, 

 pi. xxvi. fig. 3. Length of V. 3177 6 cm., breadth 3-5 cm. In 

 Fig. la the truncated base of one of the bracts is represented as seen 

 from below; this shows a number of regularly placed projections 

 from the face of a bract, extending from the latter to the internal 

 fibrous structures. In some of the figures of the inflorescence 

 of Sennettites Gibsonianus, Carr., given by Solms-Laubach, 1 there 

 are similar internal projections represented in the inner face of 

 the "outer layer" of the fructification. In describing the 

 structure of the inflorescence, Solms writes: "Not unfrequently 

 sharp and tolerably deep indentations penetrate from without into 

 this homogeneous external layer ; these indentations are covered 

 with the epidermis, and probably answer to the cross-sections of 

 a superficial areolation of the entire fructification ; they are par- 

 ticularly well and clearly seen near the base of the spadix in 

 fig. xii. of pi. xxv." The same indentations are seen in Solms' 

 pi. xxv. fig. 8, fig. 10, and fig. 11. These ingrowths are, I 

 believe, the structures seen in our Fig. la, PI. X. In the longi- 

 tudinal section of Cycadeoidea etrusca, Cap. and Solms, 2 figured 

 by Capellini and Solms, pi. iv. fig. 1, we have the structures 

 clearly represented, and again, on a larger scale, by Carruthers 3 

 in B. Gibsonianus (pi. Ix. fig. 3). In his description of the latter 

 species, Solms speaks of the interstitial organs as becoming much 

 more numerous towards the periphery of the spadix (pi. xxv. 

 figs. 8 and 11); Lignier also refers to this character, and in a 

 figure of the peripheral region of the fructification (p. 31, fig. 2), 

 shows the superficial bracts on the outside, and internal to these 

 much smaller interseminal bracts and atrophied seed-bearing 



1 Solms-Laubach (2), pi. xxv. figs. 8 and 10-12. 



2 Capellini. 



3 Carruthers (1). 



