'27$ DE8CBIPT1VE CATALOG UK 



Hythia El gar i, sp. nov. 

 [Plates XXIX, XXX ; text-figs. 85, 86.] 



Diagnosis. Species founded on tbo secondary wood, 

 1 4 x 8-9 x 22-4 cm. of which is petrified, probably part of a 

 much larger trunk. A woody trunk forming timber of un- 

 known girth, but evidently considerably more than 14 cm. in 

 diameter. Growth-rings may or may not have been present. 

 Wood consisting of fibre-tracheids, parenchyma, and isolated 

 circular vessels uniformly distributed and averaging 50-70 p in 

 diameter. Medullary rays numerous, multiseriate, some of the 

 rays very broad and conspicuous ; ray-cells of at least two kinds, 

 the majority of the cells being very much compressed and radi- 

 ally elongated and thin-walled. The shorter bordering cells of 

 the ray with thickened and pitted walls, with groups of round to 

 almost scalariform pits in the radial walls. Vessels irregularly 

 pitted with round pits merging into scalariform pits. 

 HORIZON. Hythe Beds, Lower Greensand. 

 LOCALITY. Near Maidstone, Kent. 



TYPE. In the Maidstone Museum ; a part of the type block 

 and sections cut from it in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), 

 V. 13232 and V. 13232 a, b, c, d, e,f, (j. 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. The specimen consists of a good-sized 

 block of secondary wood, measuring 14 x 8*9 cm. by 22-4 cm. 

 long. It appears to be but a portion of a still larger woody 

 trunk, and there is nothing to indicate the limits of the size it 

 may have reached. The woody texture is now petrified in a fine 

 and hard medium, but the woody fibre was evidently a good deal 

 macerated, fungus-eaten, and softened before petrifaction, as can 

 be seen by the extraordinary contortions of the medullary rays 

 (text-fig. 85, and PL XXIX, fig. 1). These contortions obliter- 

 ated any traces there may have been of growth-zones, so that I 

 am unable to determine whether or not they were present. The 

 angiospermic nature of the wood can be at once detected by the 

 naked eye from the appearance of the weathered surface, where 

 the broad rays are very conspicuous. Secondary wood alone 

 appears to be present. 



TOPOGRAPHY OF THE WOOD. The salient characters of the 

 wood are its numerous broad medullary rays and the slightness 

 of the lignification of the vessels, fibres, etc. The wood must 



