Agere ae Ry ee 
THE AFFINITIES OF GEINITZIA GRACILLIMA! 
EDWARD C. JEFFREY 
(WITH PLATE VIII) 
In a recently published memoir in collaboration with Dr. ARTHUR 
Ho.iick, the writer has shown that there is good anatomical 
evidence for regarding numerous mesozoic conifers, which have 
in the past, from a consideration of their external habit alone, been 
considered to belong to the Taxodineae or Cupressineae, as in 
reality appertaining to the araucarian tribe of the Coniferales. In 
the memoir in question,? disjoined leafy twigs and more or less 
fragmentary relics of cones were described anatomically. In the 
case of the vegetative twigs it was shown that the anatomical 
structure was entirely araucarian, and similar evidence was some- 
what less conclusively given in the case of the cones. Unfor- 
tunately, it was not possible in any of the Kreischerville material 
to investigate the woody axis of a cone, which would obviously 
furnish the clearest evidence as to the true affinities of the repro- 
ductive branches of the Kreischerville material. The cone scales 
alone, although furnishing in the opinion of the present writer ample 
_ evidence of their araucarian relationships, might by those less 
experienced in the details of coniferous anatomy still be considered 
as belonging to strobili of the Taxodineae or Cupressineae. Happily 
_ another cretaceous deposit has finally furnished the much to be 
is. 9x. 
_ desired testimony, which apparently puts beyond all possible 
_ question the araucarian affinities of the cretaceous remains, which 
have in the past been referred by purely systematic paleobotanists 
_ to the living genus Sequoia. 
The material on which the present article is based was derived 
from the Matawan Formation, which clearly overlies the Raritan 
_ or Upper Potomac beds from which the Kreischerville material 
* Contributions from the Phanerogamic Laboratories of Harvard University, 
? Hottick, Artaur, and Jerrrey, E. C., Studies of if 
from Kreischerville, New York. Mem. N.Y. ‘Bot. Gard., no. III. May 1909. 
al] [Botanical Gazette, vol. 51 
