148 The Lower Cretaceous Floras op the World 



— are all represented in the early Cretaceous floras. The Ginkgoacese, 

 to which some at least of the species of Baiera belong, are much less 

 prominent than in the Jurassic. The Taxacese are well represented and 

 seem to have been relatively more prominent than at the present day. 



The Pinaceas are relatively well represented, especially when it is re- 

 membered that they were largely upland types then as now, and that they 

 lack the advantage over Cycadophytes, and to a certain extent over Ferns 

 as well, of resisting maceration. The Araucariacese are an important ele- 

 ment among the Lower Cretaceous conifers, some forms in their foliage 

 characters, cone-habit, and anatomy scarcely distinguishable from their 

 well known and rather isolated descendants of the present day. Others, 

 less certainly identified, indicate a considerable adaptive radiation of 

 forms of this general type during all of Cretaceous time. 



With regard to the dominant modern class, the Angiospermse, little of 

 importance can be stated with precision. Certain genera from the oldest 

 Potomac, namely, Rogersia, Ficophyllum, and Protecephyllum, have been 

 described as angiosperms. The writer is convinced that these forms are 

 not angiosperms, but are probably G-netales, although it must be said in 

 all frankness that there is no real evidence one way or the other on this 

 question, and it would do little or no violence to the known facts if some 

 of them were referred to the Filicales, a reference already amply proven 

 for one at least of Saporta's Proangiosperms, the genus Protorhipis. 

 The latter author classes a number of indefinite forms from the Neo- 

 comian and later Lower Cretaceous horizons of Portugal as Proangi- 

 osperms, such 'fragments as have received the generic appellations of 

 Poacites, RMzocaulon, etc., while other similar fragments are classed as 

 monocotyledons. The evidence of the angiospermic nature of any of 

 these remains is scarcely worthy of confidence. Nothing remotely sug- 

 gestive of this class is known from the Wealden floras of England, Bel- 

 gium, or Germany, the jSTeocomian flora of Japan, the Kootanie flora of 

 Montana and British Columbia, or even from the Barremian of Eussia, 

 France, and England. The so-called Urgonian of Greenland contains 

 undoubted dicotyledons, but their exact age is not altogether b^ond 

 question, and they may be considerably younger. There is fairly satis- 



