XLIV] ARAUCARIOPITYS 235 



the leaves accompanying the shoots of Woodworthia are not 

 strictly comparable with those of the foliar organs of recent 

 Araucarias which have no short shoots in their axils. Jeffrey 

 regards the short shoot as a primitive attribute of the coniferous 

 stock and its occurrence in the stems of Woodworthia and Arau- 

 cariopitys is held to be evidence in support of the interpretation 

 of the seminiferous scales of Abietineous genera as metamorphosed 

 short shoots, an interpretation which is open to question. The 

 presence of short shoots is not a monopoly of the Abietineae and 

 their presence in a stem may be regarded as a point of contact with 

 Ginkgo as well as with Abietineous plants. Attention is called 

 elsewhere to the piobability that foliar spurs like those of Pinus 

 are specialised forms of ordinary shoots. However we may 

 interpret the characters exhibited by Woodworthia, the genus is 

 an interesting example of an extinct type illustrating the combina- 

 tion with Araucarian characters of a morphological feature that 

 is no longer represented in the Araucarineae. 



X. ARAUCARIOPITYS. Jeffrey. 



A genus founded by Jeffrey 1 on a stem from the Middle Cre- 

 taceous beds of Staten Island, New York, showing on its Decorti- 

 cated surface scars of short shoots and in the structure of the wood 

 both Abietineous and Araucarian features. 



Araucariopitys americana Jeffrey. The bordered pits on the 

 radial walls of the tracheids are often contiguous and flattened 

 though in places separate and circular, usually arranged as a single 

 row. All the walls of the ray cells are pitted as in the Abietineae. 

 The large number of vertical resin-canals (fig. 758, C, D, page 323) 

 in a single tangential row is regarded as evidence of traumatic 

 origin. This conclusion is based on the fact that when canals are 

 present in wood that is known to have been wounded they occur 

 in crowded tangentially arranged rows in contrast to their sparser 

 distribution in the normal wood. There are no canals in the 

 uninjured tissues of Araucariopitys. Diaphragms of sclerous cells 

 occur in the pith as in some recent Abietineae. The short shoots 

 are shown in tangential section of the stem and stated to be accom- 

 panied by a subtending leaf. 



1 Jeffrey (07) Pis. xxvm xxx. 



