March 22, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



471 



zoic Pterldospermse. This is surely replacing 

 a probability by a possibility, and we are led 

 to wonder if the filicinean standing of the 

 modern Marattiacese will be the next point 

 assailed. In this connection it may not be 

 amiss to quote from Wieland's summary in 

 his splendid study of American Fossil Cycads, 

 just published,' he says: "Plainly the pre- 

 ceding resume of the principal characters of 

 the two great cycad groups as combined and 

 showing their descent from Marattiaceous 

 ferns of the Paleozoic, is not merely conclu- 

 sive, but one of the great cornerstones upon 

 which the conception of evolution can rest 

 secure." 



At the risk of being classed as an * impres- 

 sionist ' I would maintain that impressions 

 lacking the talismanic ' structure ' are not 

 without value, and that resemblances to 

 modern forms, while they may sometimes be 

 instances of homoplasy, are far from being 

 ' of absolutely no value.' It should be borne 

 in mind that structures concerned with the 

 vital process of reproducing the plant species, 

 particularly at a time when seed-bearing was 

 being inaugurated, would be far more liable 

 to show homoplastic variations than would the 

 purely vegetative structures. And far from 

 echoing Professor Seward's statement that at 

 the Linnean Society discussion too great 

 stress had been laid on vegetative and too 

 little on reproductive organs, it would seem 

 to me that the reverse has been the true 

 case. 



Dr. Scott's discussion, as usual, is admirable 

 and only too brief in the printed report. The 

 novelties which he can always be depended 

 upon to bring before his audience are facts 

 of observation and not subjective. It may 

 not be amiss to repeat his statement that he 

 repudiated entirely the origin of the Arau- 

 carieae or of any of the known Gymnosperms 

 from Lycopods, and this leads us to a brief 

 consideration of the more pretentious paper 

 by Seward and Ford in the Philosophical 

 Transactions. As a summary of existing 

 knowledge of the fossil forms which may be 

 or have been referred to the Araucariese, and 



^ Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publ. No. 

 34, August, 1906, p. 240. 



as a contribution to our knowledge of the 

 relatively little known living forms, this con- 

 tribution contains much that is valuable, espe- 

 cially under the second head just mentioned. 

 As a possible illustration of the somewhat 

 biased view-point assumed throughout, the 

 fossil cone scales which have been referred to 

 Dammara may be cited. With reference to 

 all of these the authors say — " we fail to recog- 

 nize any sufficient reason for this compari- 

 son." They quote Berry (1903) as seemingly 

 concurring in Newberry's doubt regarding 

 their relation to Dammara, which doubt they 

 characterize as ' well founded-' This in spite 

 of the fact that Newberry was quoted by me 

 and his view discredited in the same para- 

 graph, while in the next paragraph my sug- 

 gestion of a further reason for doubting New- 

 berry's view is quoted by the authors in 

 another part of their paper (p. 380) as casting 

 doubt upon HoUick's determination of Arau- 

 carian foliage from Cliffwood, N. J. While 

 the facts are matters of no very vital im- 

 portance in this connection, I may state that 

 I have recently collected an undoubted Arau- 

 carian cone of large size from the New Jersey 

 Cretaceous and foliage similar to Araucarites 

 ovatus Hollick from the Cretaceous of North 

 Carolina, and that I do not entertain the 

 slightest doubt of their Araucarian affinities. 

 Furthermore, in reference to Dammara in a 

 paper published in 1904,' a copy of which was 

 mailed to Professor Seward, I state that addi- 

 tional material had led me to remove the 

 interrogation mark which Hollick had placed 

 after the generic name in Dammara Cliff- 

 woodensis. These details are only mentioned 

 in this place to show the misconceptions, pre- 

 sumably present in other cases, arising from 

 a misquotation of various authors. Happily 

 Hollick and Jeffrey have recently shown' that 

 the relationship of the Dammara scales, 

 founded as it was upon external resemblance, 

 is amply proven by the anatomical structure, 

 although it must be confessed that this con- 

 tribution does not seem to have greatly im- 

 pressed the English authors if we may judge 

 from their summation of its contents. 



'Bull. Torrey Club, Vol. XXXI., p. 69. 

 *Amer. 'Nat., Vol. XL., No. 471, March, 1906. 



