274 BEANIA. 



Single seeds, like that figured by Phillips as a ' winged seed,' 

 are not uncommon ; there is no trace of a wing in the example 

 figured by Phillips (original specimen in the York Museum), but 

 the coat is considerably wrinkled, a character well marked in 

 Beania seeds, and pointing to a thick fleshy integument such as 

 that of the seeds of the recent genus Cycas. 



It is difficult to decide by what Jurassic plant Beania gracilis 

 was borne. Carruthers and other authors compare the flower with 

 those of Zamia and other recent Cycads, and would presumably 

 connect it with one of the numerous Cycads of Lower Oolite age 

 which bore pinnate Cycadean fronds. So far as we know, the 

 abundant Cycadean fronds belonged to plants with Bennettitean 

 flowers ; this is, I believe, proved to be the case in Zamites gig as 

 ( Williamsonia gigas), which bore the well - known Williamson ia 

 type of flower; and it is very probable that the plant with the 

 common fronds described by Lindley & Hutton as Pterophyllum 

 pecten bore the flowers known as Williamsonia Zeckenbyi, Nath. 

 The Cycadean trunks from Maryland and Dakota in America, and the 

 species known as Bennettites Gibsonianus of England, also the various 

 Bennettites stems of Italy and elsewhere, produced floral structures 

 very different from those of recent Cycads, and hardly comparable 

 to such a type as that of Beania gracilis. We have, indeed, no 

 satisfactory instance of a female Cycadean flower of Mesozoic 

 age which can be reasonably connected with a plant bearing 

 Cycadean foliage. The splendid Cycadean fronds which Heer 

 has figured from the Cretaceous of Greenland as Cycas Stcenstrupi, 1 

 is represented as associated with a fossil bearing a distinct 

 resemblance to a carpophyll of the Cycas type ; but an examination 

 of the type- specimen in the Copenhagen Museum convinced me 

 that the drawing of the supposed carpophyll does not accurately 

 represent the facts. There is nothing on the slab containing 

 the well - preserved Cycadean frond which can be reasonably 

 compared with the carpel of Cycas. It is true there are a few 

 stems, such as Cycadeoidea giga?itea, Sew., which show no trace 

 of Bennettitean flowers, but these are exceptional, and it must 

 be admitted that such evidence as we have points to the conclusion 

 that the majority of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous Cycads 



1 Heer (82), pi. v. ; Potonie" (99), p. 277, fig. 271. 



