82 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [JANUARY 
it to the Cupressineae and four put it with the Taxodineae, as the original 
describer, BRONGNIART, also did. No reasons are given for Miss HoLpEn’s 
choice. 
After discussing the combination of araucarian and abietinean characteris- 
tics in Volizia, she speaks of other forms showing similar combinations, and 
says: “Dr. JEFFREY . . . . appears to have demonstrated that the Abietineae 
are older, and that it is the Araucarineae which become ‘wiasaeatics: more and 
more like the Abietineae in successively older geological formations.” Certain- 
_ly this is not the case in the two forms she describes, even disregarding the 
evidence from the cone in both cases which is known in impression only. hen, 
however, the cone impressions are given equal i importance in each case, the fore- 
going is further at variance with the facts. Nor is the case improved 
by including the other transitional forms, which are considered important by 
the Harvard school, W oodworthia of the Triassic and Araucariopitys of the Cre- 
taceous, since the former is practically an araucarian and the latter an abietin- 
ean. So far then as the evidence from the transitional forms stands, the reverse 
of the conclusion attributed to Professor JEFFREY is the fact. It is the Abietineae 
which are more like the Araucarineae in the older geological formations. When 
this evidence is taken in connection with the fact that no true Abietineae have 
been described from the strata preceding the Triassic, the historical evidence 
is seen to be wholly adverse to the Abietineae. 
Miss HoLDEN’s own work then, far from supporting the abietinean ancestry 
of the Araucarineae, is directly opposed to it. Had the full evidence of the 
character of the ancestral pitting in the araucarians been before her, she would 
probably have escaped the pervasive influence of this theory.—R. B. THOMSON. 
Pityoxylon.—One of Miss HotpEn’s” three new species of Pityoxyla from 
the Middle Cretaceous of Cliffwood, N.J., is “probably the earliest form with 
all the characters of a modern hard pine, yet retaining certain ancestral fea- 
tures, as the association of primary and fascicular leaves.”’ She has appropri- 
ately designated this form Pinus protoscleropitys. Its occurrence in the 
Middle Cretaceous is regarded as “‘an argument for the great geological an- 
tiquity of the pines as such.” Her Pityoxylon foliosum is “possibly the wood of 
Prepinus, with all its leaves borne directly on the main axis,” and combining 
the characteristics of both hard and soft pines. The third form, Pityoxylon 
anomalum, has much the same type of wood structure as the second, but has 
‘fall its leaves borne on short shoots.” 
The spur shoots are deaatase as large in both forms, “‘much larger ‘than 
those of living pines,” but unbranched, as in modern pines, and thus unlike 
those of Gingko, or W codsvorthin | from the Triassic whose spurs were also large. 
The large size of the spurs in the old fossil forms is evidence that the spur was 
ancestrally a branch. 
%* HOLDEN, Miss R., Cretaceous Pityoxyla from Cliffwood, New Jersey. Proc. 
Amer, Acad. 48:609-623. 1913. 
