448 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MAY 
The fossil conifers of Spitzbergen.—An important oremeig by 
GOTHAN® contains a description of the fossil woods of various geological 
horizons from the island of Spitzbergen, brought back for oe pie part by 
Arctic expeditions during the past 50 years. The most interesting woods from 
the evolutionary standpoint are those from the Upper Jurassic of Green Har- 
bour, Esmarks Glacier, and Wimansberg. Of these the author remarks: ‘Es 
ist tiberhaupt gemein auffallend, wie haufig man in der Hoftiipflung zahlreicher 
Hdlzer der oberen Juraformation des Nordens Araucarioiden Charackteren 
begegnet, und dies bei Angehorigen von Familien, die mit den Araucarieen im 
iibrigen sicher weiter nichts zu thun haben” (p. 18). The author holds that 
strongly pitted rays, together with normal or traumatic resin canals in the 
wood, are an infallible indication of abietineous affinities. Since most of the 
woods which he describes in this memoir have these characteristics, he puts 
them with the Abietineae, in spite of the fact that other apparently more 
important features are clearly araucarian. It is interesting to note in this 
connection that SEWARD” has referred woods of a similar type from the Upper 
Jurassic of Yorkshire in England to araucarian affinities. There seems little 
reason to doubt that S—warp rather than GOTHAN is right in this matter, 
especially as it appears from recent studies on the living Araucariineae, as yet 
unpublished, that these came from ancestors which, on comparatively ana- 
tomical evidence and in accordance with generally accepted morphological 
principles, possessed bars of Sanio in their tracheids, wood parencl yma, 
opposite pitting, resin canals in the wood, strongly pitted rays, and a clearly 
double system of ovulate cone scale bundles, all characters unmistakably 
abietineous. It is accordingly not surprising to find intermingled araucarian 
and abietineous characters in the araucarian woods of the Jurassic. More- 
over, if one admits that GOTHAN’s jurassic woods are in reality abietineous and 
not araucarian, a grave difficulty arises in the case of recently described woods 
from the American Cretaceous, such as Brachyoxylon, Araucariopitys, Parace- 
droxylon, etc., which sometimes have ligneous resin canals and sometimes lack 
them, and ibewin: have both the araucarian and the abietineous types of ray, 
the former being more abundant in these later woods. The facts can all be 
squared with a derivation of the Araucariineae from the Abietineae, but not 
with the reversed derivation. The most interesting of the new genera and 
species described in this memoir are Protopiceoxylon (P. extinctum, apparently 
beyond question araucarian), Protocedroxylon (P. araucarioides) , and Cedroxylon 
(sic!) transiens. It seems quite clear from this and other publications of 
GOTHAN on the Jurassic woods of northern Europe that the Araucariineae 
were at that period not very remote from their abietineous source. It follows 
10 GOTHAN W., Die fossilen Holzreste von Spitzbergen. Kung. Svensk. Vetensk. 
Handl. 45: no. 8. 1 
1 British Museum catalogue of Mesozoic plants, Jurassic flora. II. Liassic and 
Oolitic floras of England. pls. 6,7. London. 190 
