r 1907] JEFFREY— ARAUCARIOPITYS 



V 



441 



of these shoots presented the wound-reactions of the Abietineae, 

 radial pitting of the tracheids transitional between the Abietineae and 

 Araucarineae, and the ray structure of the Abietineae, It is more- 

 over probable that leafy shoots known under the generic appellation 

 of Czekanowskia belonged to our species, since the former occur 

 in impressions in association with these remains. 



It appears clear that in Araucariopitys we have to do with a genus 

 transitional in its characters to a marked degree and nearer to the 

 Abietineae than any other known araucarian genus living or extinct. 

 The existence in the Mesozoic of types like Araucariopitys, Brachy- 

 phyllum, Geinitzia, etc., combining in so many ways abietineous and 

 araucarian characters, does not make it easy to accept as correct the 

 position recently adopted by Professor Seward'' that the Arau- 

 carineae are distinct from, and without immediate affiliations with, the 

 other coniferous orders. It is indeed not difficult to show that the 

 aberrant forms which represent the Araucarineae in the existent flora 

 are sufficiently di£ferent from the Abietineae and most of the other 



families 



cannot 



'uller know 

 Mesozoic. 



Since it must apparently be admitted that in the Mesozoic the 

 abietineous and araucarian Conifers were not so clearly separated 

 from each other as the living representatives of those families are, 

 the question arises, which of these two admittedly ancient families 

 lies nearer to the ancestral stock ? Professor Seward and others have 



from 



Mesozoic 



own studies, as described in the monograph already referred to, only 



serv^e to emphasize), as compared with the comparative poverty ot 

 the abietineous display, for the superior antiquity of the araucarian 

 Conifers. Such an argument appears, however, to be fallacious. 

 It would be just as logical to assume that at any given period the 

 richly developed crown of a forest tree was its oldest portion. All 

 the evidence goes to show that the Araucarians were indeed the 

 crown of the coniferous genealogical tree during the Mesozoic, but 



[ 



-* Seward, A. C, and Ford, S. O., The Araucarieae, recent and extinct. Phil. 

 Trans. Roy. Soc. London B. 198:305-411. pis. 23 24. 1906. 



