CONIFERAE. 75 



or Palaeocyparis may belong to this form. One feels tempted to see 

 this same plant, but in an inferior state of preservation, in Saporta's l algal 

 genus Itieria, a specimen of which I have seen in the collection of the cole 

 des Mines at Paris, and which belongs to the Middle and Upper Oolite, 

 being found in the Coralline Oolite of St. Mihiel and in the Kimmeridge 

 of Orbagnoux. 



Finally, there remain yet two genera which, as the fructification is 

 almost or entirely unknown, are founded exclusively on characters of the 

 foliage and therefore are to a high degree provisional only. There is first 

 Albertia, Schpr 2 , a fossil peculiar to the Bunter Sandstone, and up to 

 the present time scarcely found anywhere but in the Vosges, and there 

 chiefly in the great quarry at Sulzbad near Strassburg, which is unfortun- 

 ately no longer worked. The bilaterally ramifying branches bear spirally 

 arranged spreading flat leaves, which above the broad line of insertion have 

 a spoon-like concavity and are rounded off at the upper extremity, and show 

 a delicate longitudinal striation. They are commonly compared with the 

 leaves of Dammara, but are essentially distinguished from them by the 

 broad plane of insertion. Cones, which were assumed by Schimper to 

 belong to these branches, are described by him as ellipsoid in shape and 

 formed of simple ovoid scales ; each scale is said to have one winged seed. 

 Schimper certainly had no perfect cone before him when he constituted this 

 genus, or he would have figured it and not been content with describing 

 reconstructions only. Subsequently the Museum of Strassburg actually 

 acquired a cone answering to the description and having very much the 

 habit of a cone of a pine. This cone is still there, but shows no trace of 

 the seeds, and I do not know therefore on what Schimper founded his 

 description of them, and since it is not attached to a leafy branch, its con- 

 nection with Albertia is altogether arbitrary and unsupported ; the supposed 

 male flower figured by Schimper has been determined by Schenk 3 after re- 

 examination of the original to be a young cone of Voltzia. A variety of 

 objects appear to have been distributed under this designation, for Renault 4 

 describes a similar male flower, also from Sulzbad, which if it belonged to 

 Albertia would certainly separate that genus entirely from Coniferae ; we 

 should in that case do much better to seek for objects of comparison in the 

 group of Cordaiteae which will be considered presently. In this remark- 

 able specimen leaf-like scales have in their axils other scales, which bear 

 several rows of stamens with their numerous sessile elongated anthers 

 united in fascicles (antheres sessiles tres allongees nombreuses fascicules, 

 etc.). 



The second important genus characteristic of the Permian formation is 



1 de Saporta (4), vol. i, tt. 3, 4. 2 Schimper (3) and (1). 3 Zittel (1), p. 284. Renault (2), 

 vol. iv, p. 104; t. 7, f, 14. 



