74 CONIFERAE. 



highly convex seeds of very irregular form ; he says nothing at all on this 

 point in his very brief original account of these fossils 1 . The same circum- 

 stances are explained in a different manner by Saporta, who defines the 

 genus from the expanded cone, though Schenk protests against this pro- 

 ceeding. Schenk in this case, as in most others, assumes the presence of 

 two scales which have become united to one another ; in Palissya the 

 fertile scale reaches beyond the bract-scale not with its apex but laterally, 

 and the lobes are supposed to answer to so many projecting sections of its 

 margin. These again are constructions for which the facts do not supply 

 the needful material. 



Palissya aptera is the name given by Schenk to some branches having 

 spirally arranged scale-like leaves and bearing cones. The terminal ovoid 

 cones are formed of crowded lanceolate sharply-keeled scales, and are totally 

 different in habit from the preceding ; nothing is known of their inner 

 structure. Small elliptical bodies found on the slabs are without further 

 reason taken to be the seeds. If we are still desirous of giving a general 

 definition of the genus Palissya, we must confine ourselves with Saporta to 

 the form of cone which at least shows its peculiar characters, and disregard 

 the doubtful P. aptera. It is also a question whether the branches with 

 acicular leaves really belong to the Palissya-cones. 



There are two more forms of cones which may be mentioned here, 

 though their connection with the Coniferae is not above suspicion. Saporta 2 

 has described under the name of Entomolepis Cynarocephala, Sap. an 

 elliptical cone from the Miocene beds of Armissan eight centimetres in length, 

 in which the large broad scales are firmly closed one on another, and the 

 apex of the scale runs out into a strongly developed spreading deeply inciso- 

 dentate leaf-like appendage. This cone is also noticed by Renault 3 and 

 Schenk 4 . And in the Geological Department of the British Museum a slab 

 was shown me which came from Solenhofen with the Haberlein collection, 

 and which has on it a remarkable impression named by Thiselton Dyer 6 

 Condylites squamatus. Dyer has no doubt that we have in this impression 

 the remains of a Conifer, and he was at first inclined to compare it with 

 Cupressineae. Several branches lie side by side on the slab ; these are 

 sympodially developed, and terminate each with peculiar usually four-lobed 

 bodies which may recall the cones of Callitris. Two slender innovation- 

 shoots arise on a branch beneath the extremity which bears these bodies. 

 That the plant is a Conifer may be concluded from the presence here and 

 there on the branches of crowded scutiform spirally arranged rhombic leaf- 

 cushions, such as we see in Arthrotaxis. Dyer also conjectures that some 

 of the sterile branches from Solenhofen which are classed with Arthrotaxites 



1 Schenk (3). 2 de Saporta (8). s Renault (2), vol. iv, p. 119; t. 14. 4 Zittel (1), p. 348. 

 Dyer, Thiselton (1). 



