W. Carruthers — On the Secondary Coniferce. 543 



seed is small and occupies the centre of the scale, near its base, 

 leaving a large portion of the scale free beyond it. The accom- 

 panying outline drawing exhibits the position of the seed, and 

 its proportion to the other parts. 



Notwithstanding the criticism of the learned Professor Heer and 

 the practice of some writers on fossil 

 Botany, I still think it desirable to employ 

 the termination -ites for the generic name 

 of fossil forms which are on reasonable r,<.f„„>, i ^ i f ^ 



. . Detached Scale of Araucm-ites 



grounds referred to living generic tj'pes. sphcerocaiyus, Carr. 



Not only does this enable the student at once to distinguish the 

 recent from the fossil forms, but it also gives an indication of the 

 caution which should be exercised in dealing with the objects 

 named when correlating them with species which are well known 

 and fully diagnosed as living plants are. From the necessities 

 of the case, the materials at the command of the botanist in dealing 

 with extinct plants are not only scanty, but often of little value 

 for systematic purposes. In the vast majority of cases only the 

 vegetative organs are known, and the systematic value of these 

 is comparatively small. The great variation in stems and 

 leaves of different species of the same natural genus, and indeed 

 of the individuals of many well-defined species, as well as the 

 recurrence of identical leaf- and stem-forms in widely-separated 

 members of the vegetable kingdom, make the botanist dealing with 

 recent plants hesitate to establish species on foliage only. But 

 inasmuch as many important deposits contain nothing but leaves, 

 and as large and important families of plants are known, in a fossil 

 condition, only by their foliage, it is necessary that these vegetative 

 structures should give all the information that can be obtained from 

 them. In working with recent plants the burden is not laid on the 

 student to search out characters that may exist in foliage, as the 

 worker hopes that ere long the flower or the fruit may be obtained, 

 and with it the means of determining with certainty and facility the 

 position of the plant. It is very different with geological investiga- 

 tions. The laying open the organic contents of a particular group 

 of beds is a herculean labour, before which the exploration of the 

 most dangerous and inaccessible region on the surface of the globe is 

 but child's play, and the materials which generally some happy acci- 

 dent brings to light are but the fragments which originally escaped 

 the natural decay. The remarkable labours of Prof. Heer, with 

 the most unpromising materials, establish that even these may to the 

 intelligent and educated investigator supply in part information as 

 to the systematic position of the plants to which they belong. His 

 determinations of even fragments of leaves have not unfrequently 

 been confirmed by the subsequent discovery of flowers or fruit 

 associated with them, as in the case of the arctic Magnolia Inglefieldii. 

 Yet the materials are so imperfect that a large proportion of fossil 

 species must remain doubtful. Obviously the value of these must be 

 estimated by a different standard from that which we api:)ly to a species 

 founded on a recent plant, and it is, as it seems to me, a real gain to 

 employ a terminology which will exhibit at once whether the species 



