﻿CURRENT LITERATURE 



BOOK REVIEWS 

 Mesozoic plants 



The present contribution 1 is a continuation of the admirable catalogues 

 of mesozoic plants, published from time to time, by the authorities of the British 

 Museum. One notes with pleasure in the 350 odd pages and over 30 plates 

 that the anatomy of the forms discussed is somewhat fully dealt with. Exclud- 

 ing algae and fungi, which have been described in a previous volume, the 

 authoress begins with the ferns, the most interesting of which is the genus 

 Tempskya, illustrated mainly from the Russian species T. rossica, recently 

 figured for both habit and anatomy by Kidston and Gwynne-Vaughan. 



The Cycadophyta are represented by species of Bennettites, Cycadeoidea, 

 and a new genus Colymbetes, all showing vegetative structure and anatomically 

 illustrated. Cycadeoidea and Colymbetes are of great interest because they 

 manifest the reduplication of the vascular ring so common in living cycads, 

 but hitherto not described for Bennettites and its allies. 



cones are described. In the course of her descriptions of woody coniferous 

 structures, the writer devotes herself frequently to somewhat caustic criticisms 

 of the reviewer's anatomical publications on mesozoic conifers. Significantly 

 enough she describes no araucarian woods for the Greensand. These important 

 conifers seem to have had practically no anatomical representatives in the 

 Lower Cretaceous and the Jurassic, an interesting fact for those who accept 

 the orthodox view that the conifers have originated from the Cordaitales 

 through the araucarian line. Dr. Stopes's interesting if not convincing point 

 of view can perhaps as well be illustrated from her references to the genus 

 Sequoia of the Mesozoic, as otherwise. Dr. Hollick and the reviewer have 

 brought forward anatomical evidence from the study of correlated external 

 form and internal organization that the supposed sequoias of the American 

 Mesozoic are in reality araucarian conifers, and do not belong at all to the 

 genus which they superficially simulate. Dr. Stopes admits that our material 

 is not Sequoia, and this is at first sight an indication of rare and pleasing open- 

 mindedness, but we are surprised to learn that the mesozoic remains univer- 

 sally included under Sequoia and Geinitzia by competent American systematic 

 paleobotanists are in reality wrongly referred to those genera and do not cor- 



