Or LOWER GREEXSAXD PLANTS. 191 



petrified woody branches of Conifers is exceedingly rare, and 

 I do not know another similar wood in which they have been 

 described or figured. In the present specimen only a small part 

 of the cortex is preserved, but enough to show a number of largo 

 resin-canals running through it. In this feature, as well us in 

 the details of the wood, and particularly in the ray-cells with 

 their vertical pairs of large pits per tracheid-field in the radial 

 walls, there are points of close likeness to the living genus 

 Cryptomeria. Indeed, I hesitated before keeping this species 

 in the non-committal " genus " Cupressinoxylon, when its 

 structure is in several ways so suggestive of the living genus 

 d'1/ptomeria, a plant which, though it is now a monotypic 

 genus confined to Japan, occurs in the British Tertiary deposits, 

 represented by undoubted leafy twig- and cone-impressions. 

 Nevertheless, the identity of this fossil with Cryptomeria cannot 

 be conclusively settled from the material available, and so it 

 seems better to retain it in Cupressinoxylon ; all the more so 

 since Schenk (1890 A in Zittel) illustrates Cryptomeria japonica, 

 the living species, as his type for Ciqwessinoxylon-wood. In all 

 essentials his fig. 411 is identical with text-fig. 54. 



In the Cretaceous the only undoubted Cryptomeria -fossils cf 

 which the anatomical structure is known are Cryptomeriopsis 

 antiqua, Stopes & Fujii (1910), and C. mesozoica, Suzuki (1910). 

 These are both very minute foliage-bearing twigs, which cannot 

 be exactly compared with the larger woody branch now recorded, 

 which is so much older both biologically and geologically. 



V. 13208. Type-specimen. Fragment of twig 7*5 cm. long and 

 about 1*4 cm. in diameter, a little crushed. Externally 

 part of the woody texture is visible and part is covered 

 by fragments of the coarse matrix. From another 

 part of the same twig the following sections wcro 

 cut. 



V. 13208 a. Figured, PI. XVI, figs. 1 & 2. Transverse section 

 of whole twig, showing pith, primary xylein, secondary 

 xylcm with feebly marked annual rings, and part of 

 the phloem and cortex with large resin-canals. The 

 bordered pits on the transversely cut tracheid-walls 

 show remarkably well. 



