324 CUPRESSINEAE [CH. 



In the combination of the Araucarian and the common type of 

 tracheal pitting Brachyoxylon agrees with some other genera of 

 Mesozoic woods, e.g. species of Cedroxylon, and in the formation of 

 traumatic resin-canals it resembles Abies and other genera of 

 Abietineae as also Sequoia. Jeffrey's view is that Brachyoxylon is 

 undoubtedly Araucarian though in its wound-reactions it differs 

 from the present representatives of the Araucarineae : in this 

 respect he considers the genus to hold the same relation to recent 

 Araucarineae as Sequoia holds in respect of its power of developing 

 resin-canals in response to injury to other allied genera in which 

 no such reaction occurs. Admitting the Araucarian arrangement 

 of pits on some though by no means on all tracheids, the sum of 

 characters hardly warrants the inclusion of Brachyoxylon in the 

 Araucarineae : as in several other Mesozoic genera there is in some 

 degree a mixture of characters indicative of a generalised type and, 

 while Jeffrey sees in this combination evidence of the derivation of 

 Araucarian Conifers from an Abietineous ancestry, I venture to 

 regard the spasmodic recurrence of the Araucarian type of pitting 

 as a partial persistence of characters inherited from an ancient 

 Araucarian stock. 



Miss Holden 1 has described some wood from Cliffwood, New 

 Jersey, which she refers to Brachyoxylon, differing from that 

 described by Jeffrey in the presence of fibres in the secondary 

 phloem, a feature associated generally with Cupressineae, Taxo- 

 dineae, and the Podocarpineae. In the Cliffwood material the 

 medullary rays are said to have smooth walls, a feature in which 

 they differ from those of the Abietineae. 



BRACHYPHYLLUM. Brachyphyllum crassum Lesquereux. 



This name was given by Lesquereux 2 to a large branched 

 vegetative shoot from the Dakota group, and for specimens, 

 believed by Hollick to be identical with Lesquereux's species, from 

 the Amboy clays Newberry proposed the name macrocarpum 3 : this 

 specific name was not published and in the Amboy clay mono- 

 graph 4 the designation Brachyphyllum crassum is adopted. The 



1 Holden, R. (14) p. 171. 2 Lesquereux (91) p. 32, PL n. fig. 5. 



3 Hollick in Newberry and Hollick (95) p. 51 (footnote). 



4 Newberry and Hollick (95) p. 51, PI. vn. figs. 17. 



