470 GNETALES [CK. 



accepted as trustworthy records. The pieces of vegetative branches 

 and the paired nuts described by Heer 1 from Jurassic strata in 

 Siberia as Ephedrites antiquus are of no botanical value. Portions 

 of inflorescences preserved in amber from the Baltic coast and 

 named by Goeppert and Berendt 2 Ephedrites Johnianus and similar 

 specimens referred by Goeppert from the same Oligocene beds to 

 Ephedra Mengeana have been identified by Conwentz 3 as fragments 

 of flowering shoots of a Loranthaceous genus, Patzea. Engelhardt 4 

 refers some slender branches from Tertiary beds in Chile to Ephedra 

 but they, like most of the specimens recorded as fossil represen- 

 tatives of the genus, are too incomplete to be accepted as evidence. 

 In the absence of anatomical data or of well preserved flowers it- 

 would be exceedingly difficult to recognise impressions of vegetative 

 shoots of Ephedra and to distinguish them from Dicotyledonous 

 twigs of similar habit. Similarly the torn lamina of a Welwitschia 

 leaf bears too close a resemblance to other linear parallel-veined 

 leaves to be recognisable unless the preservation is such as to show 

 traces of the characteristic venation mentioned in the account of 

 the recent genus. Comparisons between some fossil seeds and 

 the winged seeds of Welwitschia 5 , though in some cases possibly 

 justified by actual relationship, cannot be considered to have any 

 importance unless supported by additional evidence. The seeds- 

 named by Renault Gnetopsis and subsequently investigated bv 

 Oliver and Salisbury 6 are now recognised as types closely allied 

 to Lagenostoma and other Pteridosperm seeds from Carboniferous 

 rocks. 



In their monograph of the Pliocene Floras of the Dutch- 

 Prussian Border Mr and Mrs Clement Reid figure under the name 

 Gnetum scandens var. robustum 7 a piece of axis 8mm. long and 

 4 mm. broad showing eight nodes bearing crowded scars of some 

 deciduous appendages. The authors speak of the specimen as 

 'a portion of a male inflorescence of a Gnetum... so close to that 

 of the living G. scandens that we cannot separate it.' If their 



1 Heer (77) ii. p. 82, Pis. xiv., xv. 



2 Goeppert and Berendt (45) A. Pis. iv., v.; Goeppert and Menge (83) A. PI. xvi. 



3 Conwentz (86) pp. 136, 138, PL xra. figs. 820. 



4 Engelhardt (91) p. 647. 5 Seward (04) B. pp. 19, 20. 



6 Oliver and Salisbury (11) p. 34. 



7 Reid, C. and E. M. (15) p. 55, PI. xx. fig. 27. 



