WILLIAMSONIA. 177 



Family BENNETTITE^l. 



Under this head we include the genus Williamsonia, which 

 may be conveniently retained as a Mesozoic type closely allied 

 to Bennettites. There appears to he good evidence also in favour 

 of including the genus Anomozamites in the Bennettitese. In 

 the second volume of the Wealden Catalogue * I have used 

 Williamsonia in the sense of a suhgenus of Bennettites, and it 

 is possible that this is the wiser course to adopt ; on the other 

 hand, we are less intimately acquainted with the plants usually 

 referred to Williamsonia than with the original species of Bennettites, 

 and it is a convenience to retain the former name as denoting 

 a member of the Bennettiteao which has long been known as 

 a Jurassic genus of doubtful affinity. 



Genus WILLIAMSONIA, Carruthers. 

 [Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xxvi. p. 691, 1870.] 



1. Williamsonia gigas (Lindley & Hutton). 



2. Williamsonia pecten (Phillips). 



The history of Williamsonia was dealt with at length in the second 

 volume of the Wealden Catalogue, and need not be recapitulated. 3 

 Since my account of Wittiamsonia was written I have had an 

 opportunity of examining several specimens of the genus, and from 

 some of them, more particularly from English examples in the 

 Natural History Museum, Paris, I have been able to satisfy 

 myself that Williamson's restoration of the Yorkshire Oolite 

 plant 3 Williamsonia gigas is in essentials correct. The 

 pinnate Cycadean fronds described in 1835 as Zamia gigas were 

 undoubtedly borne on a stem which presented an appearance 

 practically identical with that of most recent Cycads ; the same 

 stem also bore flowering shoots which terminated in flowers 



1 Seward (95), p. 146. 



2 Seward (95), pp. 146-157. 



3 Williamson (70), pi. liii. 



