OF LOWER GKEEN8AND PLANTS. 41 



This explains why the two main pieces do not fit into one 

 another in their present state. Hooker took the smaller (upper) 

 main piece, and it is now in the Museum at Kew * ; the larger 

 (under) main piece was made over by Gibson's family to the 

 Botanical Department of the British Museum f. Hooker 

 appears to have used some of the smaller fragments for the 

 preparation of slices ; others were kept by Morris, from whose 

 hands they passed into the private possession of Carruthers. I 

 gather this from the fact that Carruthers has a fragment which 

 still bears Morris' label, written with his own hand/' 



Parts of the smaller fragments seem to have been scattered 

 still further, for Wieland (1911) says that he has himself cut 

 sections of B. Gibson.) anus. 



Though much had been previously written about the externals 

 of the numerous American trunks of Cycadeoiden, the beginning 

 of a real understanding of them, and the prelude to the im- 

 portant American contribution, lies in Wieland's first paper on 

 their male flowers in 1899. 



One of the most interesting results of the American work is 

 that it shows how cosmopolitan was the Jiennettites-\y^e in 

 Lower Cretaceous and Jurassic times. The fruits of some of 

 the American species described by Wieland (1906 and others) 

 are very closely similar to those of B. Gibsonianus. 



As was realised by Carruthers (1870) when he originally 

 established the group, the most surprising of the many un- 

 expected features it exhibits is the fact that, instead of having 

 fructifications as simple, or simpler than the living Cycads, they 

 were more complex and specialised. All succeeding work has 

 further established this fundamental fact, and has served to 

 illustrate it more fully. 



The best-known European species of Bennettites is the beauti- 

 fully preserved B. Morierei (see Lignier, 1894, 1911, 1912) 

 described by Prof. Lignier. In many respects it approaches 

 B. Gibsonianm, but various details mark it out as a well-defined 

 species. In conneclion with this plant Lignier (1911) suggests 

 that possibly the forms which persisted into the Lower Cretaceous 



* A fragment has now been transferred to the Geological Dept., British 

 Museum (Nat.. Hist.), and from it new sections have been cut (see p. 46j. 



t Some of thi? remains there, the rest has been transferred to the 

 Geological Dept. 



