1914] _ CURRENT LITERATURE 81 
to show that the reverse is true. The pitting, for example, in the cone axis 
of Araucaria Bidwillii may be as much as 5-seriate, the pits alternating and 
extending from end to end of the tracheid. In this and in other primitive regions 
as well, the mouth of the pit is elliptical, a vestige of the more ancient scalari- 
form condition, a condition which is retained even longer where the medullary 
ray touches the tracheid. No torus is present in these regions too, although 
this is well developed in the whole pine alliance. Again, Miss HOLDEN says: 
“Impressions present more evidence for merging T'ylodendron with the araucari- 
ans. Several varieties of leafy branches, known as Walchia, and definitely 
associated with Tylodendron pith casts, have been described, all bearing a close 
resemblance to different species of Araucaria. Of their fructifications little is 
known, further than that, as shown by ZEILLER, the scales of the female cone 
bear single seeds, another araucarian feature.” She presents nothing in oppo- 
sition to the above statement, but in concluding the paragraph says: “If these 
criteria are reliable, the presence of T’ylodendron in the Permian strata bears out 
the orthodox view that the Araucarineae are the oldest living family of the 
Coniferales.” Since Miss HotpEn has not invalidated any of these criteria, 
the case must hold for the araucarian connection. She evidently fears to draw 
this conclusion on account of the temerity of the advocates of araucarian ances- 
try of the conifers, for her final point is that ‘‘there are woods of the Tylodendron 
type extending as far back as the Culm, yet no advocate of the antiquity of the 
araucarian line would suggest that it extends as far back as that.” 
On the other hand, Miss HoLpEN considers that her more recent form 
Voltzia coburgensis from the Triassic is an araucarian, but one derived from the 
Abietineae. She accepts the conclusion as to the araucarian affinity of Volizia, 
though she has rejected this conclusion in the case of Tylodendron which has one 
point more in its favor. The character of the rays, etc., of Voltzia is described 
as distinctly araucarian, just asin Tylodendron. The leaf trace is single at the 
pith, but forks during its passage through the wood, a similar condition, as Miss 
OLDEN states, to that in Agathis. She has previously (p. 246) drawn attention 
to “the araucarian single trace” in Tylodendron. Of the pits in Voltzia, she 
says that they are “always uniseriate and usually scattered . . . . rarely are 
they so closely compressed as to be flattened and angular. While they are as 
distant as the pits of the Abietineae and Taxodineae, they are never, as is the 
Tule in these groups, separated by so-called bars of Sanio.” This pitting is the 
one point of difference from Tylodendron, where the pits are typically of the 
Araucarioxylon type, and the one point more in favor of the araucarian connec- 
tion if the latter. 
The anatomical evidence of abietinean affinity of Voltzia is said to be “the 
Scattered position of the pits.” Why this is distinctive of the Abietineae is 
not clear. She herself states (see the quotation in the preceding paragraph) 
that it is found in the Taxodineae, and it occurs in other conifers as well. Nor 
38 It evident why the cone is abietineous, as Miss HoLpEN states. She refers to 
nine authorities, only one of which agrees that it is abietineous. Three refer 
