72 CONIFERAE. 



permitted to the botanist. The foliage of the Sphenolepidiae is spiral and 

 close -pressed, or has the tips of the leaves spreading. 



The genus Geinitzia, as far as is at present known with certainty, is 

 peculiar to the Upper Chalk, for the specimens from the Tertiary formations 

 of the New World cited by Schenk l are still of too doubtful character to 

 come into question. Of this genus we have G. cretacea, Ung. 2 , from Neustadt 

 in Austria, O. formosa, Heer 3 , from Quedlinburg, and a fragment of a cone 

 from the beds of Patoot in Greenland described by Heer 4 as G. hyperborea. 

 The cylindrical cones are distinguished by their unusually thick axis, which 

 bears scales having a scutiform polygonal terminal expansion with a deep 

 umbo in the centre and radiating striae all round, and a central stalk of 

 striking thickness which scarcely diminishes at all downwards. Heer's 

 statements with respect to the seeds attached to this longitudinally striated 

 stalk need further confirmation. That the branches found with these cones 

 belong to them is proved, at least in the case of G. formosa, by Heer's 

 figure 5 , which shows the two in connection. These branches are slender 

 and rod-like with few ramifications, and thickly covered with spiral leaves ; 

 the bases of the leaves on the surface of the branch form rhombic areolae, 

 which are seen with special distinctness where the projecting falcately curved 

 apices are removed by fracture of the stone. A good figure of G. formosa 

 is to be seen also in Schenk 6 . 



Among the branches of Coniferae from the lithographic limestone of 

 Solenhofen, besides the above-mentioned forms of Cupressineae and the 

 Brachyphyllae which will be noticed again presently, cone-bearing branches 

 are found which retain the name of Echinostrobus Sternbergii originally 

 given by Schimper to these remains collectively. The chapter in Saporta 7 

 on this point should be consulted. The branches, figured in Schenk 8 , are 

 pinnately ramified and clothed with closely crowded short scale-like leaves 

 attached by a broad rhombic base, much as in the modern genus Arthro- 

 taxis, on which account the fossil form was named by Unger Arthrotaxites 

 lycopodioides. The cones are spherical, and their mode of preservation 

 is such that only the external form can be discerned. Each of the com- 

 ponent scales ends in a stout thorn-like process. Saporta would place the 

 genus near Arthrotaxis ; he also thinks that Swedenborgia 9 , a peculiar 

 Conifer from the Rhaetic beds of Schonen of which nothing has been known 

 hitherto except cones with the habit of those of Cryptomeria, belongs to 

 the same alliance. These cones, which are evidently over-ripe and fallen 

 from the trees, are ovoid in shape, and their scales stand out at a right angle 

 from the axis. The single scale is wedge-shaped and narrowed into the 

 long stalk, and has the upper margin usually divided into five acute three- 



1 Zittel (1). Unger (4). 3 Heer (15). * Heer (5), vol. vii i, t. 51, f. 13. * Heer 



(15), t. 2, f. 5. Zittel (1), p. 299. T de Saporta (4). Zittel (1), p. 302. Nathorst (2). 



