DESCRIPTION OP SPECIES. 31 



its size aud shape. In the Hving species, however, the seed is reguUir, uot 

 inchued to one side, and marked by three or four very thin costjc. 



Habitat: Ten miles northeast of Delphos, Kansas. No. 4077 of the 

 collection of Mr. R. D. Lacoe, of Pittston, Pennsylvania. 



Cycadeospebmum columnabe, sp. nov. 

 PI. XLIV, Figs. 7-8. 



Seeds large, obovate, constricted below the middle; truncate at base, 

 striate or costate lengthwise; striae thin, 4-5°"" distant; intervals smooth; 

 texture hard, woody. 



There are two fiuigments which seem to belong to two different species, 

 one (PI. XLIV, Fig. 7) is 4™' long, 2.5"" broad at the middle, marked length- 

 wise by thin striae passing from the apex to the base; the other, more frag- 

 mentary, appears bordered and also traversed lengthwise in the middle by 

 thick costae. In both specimens the surface is smooth between the striae. 



This organism apparently represents a kind of fruit referable to the 

 Cycadeae. As far as I know the only fossil fragment of marked affinity to 

 this is that figured by Heer, Fl. Foss. Helv., PI. LVI, Figs. 28, 29, which 

 he there briefly describes in a note on p. 178, under the name oi Lafonia 

 helvetica, and which the author considers as an egg of a shark or ray found 

 in Jurassic strata. The texture of the organism figured here is apparently 

 woody; its size is less than that shown in Heer's figure, but is not larger 

 than that of Ciicadcospermum PumeUi Sa}).,' though this last differs greatly 

 by its exactly ovate shape and smooth and striate surface. Its reference 

 to the genus Cycadeospermum Sap. (Cycadinocarpus Schimp.) is however 

 not positively ascertained. In the description of this genus Saporta remarks 

 that the fruits referable to it as fruits of Cycadeae are either large or small; 

 that they are externally angular, smo(jth or longitudinalh* striate or costate- 

 as in the fruit under consideration. In the Carboniferous a number of fruits 

 as large as or even larger than that from Kansas, described and figured 

 under the generic name of Cardiocarpus,^ have such a degree of likeness to 

 it that one can but consider it as a vegetable organism. 



Habitat : Ellsworth County, Kansas. Nos. 830 and 831 of the Museum 

 of the University of Kansas. Collected by E. P. West. 



'Pal^ont. Fr., PI. Jnrass., PI. cxvil, Fig. 9. 

 •Coal Flora, PI. cix, Figs. 22-25. 



