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Meeting of May 12, 1925. 



This meeting was held at the American Museum of Natural 

 History. The following were elected to membership: 



Prof. F. K. Butters, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 

 Minnesota. 



Miss Mary E. Wood, Johnson Hall, 411 West ii6th Street, 

 New York, N. Y. 



Dr. Sheppard Shapiro, Montefioro Hospital, Gunhill Rd. and 

 Bainbridge Avenue, New York, N. Y. 



The program of the evening consisted of an illustrated lecture 

 by Dr. G. R. Wieland of Yale, entitled "The early Mesozoic 

 flowering plants," which was illustrated by lantern slides and 

 specimens. Dr. Wieland confined himself chiefly to the evi- 

 dence of floral structures in the older Mesozoic, accumulated 

 since the cycadeoid flower buds were first discovered by him 

 in 1899. He recited some of the history of discovery in the 

 petrified cycadeoid series, and then gave his reasons for calling 

 the group and its allies the hemi-cycadales, or half-cycads; — 

 that is, because of the vegetative likeness to the existing cycads, 

 and the floral antithesis in which flowers of the one group are 

 contrasted with cones of the other. 



The petrified cycadeoids were sketched from slides showing 

 stem, leaf and flower. Attention was called to the fact that 

 there is a great stem-bearing stratum lying at the top of a mesa 

 in the southern Black Hills "Rim" near Minnekahta, now set 

 aside as the " Cycad National Monument." Here is perhaps the 

 world's greatest deposit of semi-gem stone; for the polished sur- 

 faces and thin sections are of a uniform and uncommon beauty. 



A view was given of a wedge cut from the historic Dresden 

 cycad, found in 1753 and now about to be sectioned for the first 

 time. The very considerable floral variation within the cyca- 

 deoids was illustrated. The most typical flowers are not those 

 of the petrified stems, but those borne on related types with 

 small, much branched stems. Such are the William soniella and 

 Wielandiella. The smaller flowered cycadeoids, along with their 

 relatives formed in all lower Mesozoic time a dominant group 

 including thousands of species. One of the most striking as- 

 semblages of this vegetation is that collected by Dr. Wieland in 

 the Liassic of Southern Mexico. 



