400 Professor Buckland on the CycadeoidecE, a Family of Fossil Plants 



varieties of leaves resembling those of Cycadeae^ but which cannot be identi- 

 fied with any known species of that family. 



M. Adolphe Brongniart also *, in his account of the coal-field of Hoer in 

 Scania, the age of which is decidedly much more recent than the coal of 

 Newcastle, and probably identical with the oolitic coal-field of Whitby, 

 describes the occurrence therein of fronds of four species of plants, that have 

 an analogy to the family of Cycadeae ; and are accompanied by other vegeta- 

 bles differing entirely from those of the regular and more ancient coal strata. 

 There is also a strong resemblance to the Cycadeae in some leaves I possess 

 from the oolitic slate of Stonesfield. 



From the same Stonesfield slate I have a fossil amentum called by Count 

 Sternberg Conites Bucklandii, of which he has published a short account 

 in his " Flore du Monde Primiiiff," with a figure copied from a drawing by 

 the late Mr. Sowerby. He describes it as a cone eight inches long and three 

 inches in diameter, with scales most like those of the Pinus Abies, but not 

 entirely agreeing with them, nor with those of any known species of cone ; 

 and proposes to refer it to a new genus among the Carpolites. This Conites 

 so much resembles the amentum of Cycas circinalis, which blossomed in 

 Edinburgh in May 1827, and of which an engraving and description are given 

 by Dr. Hooker in the Botanical Magazine l, as to induce me to believe that it 

 may be the amentum of a Cycadeoidea ; but a much more minute comparison 

 of the structures both of the fossil and of the amentum of a living Cycas than 

 I have at present the means of making, must be undertaken before this point 

 can be considered as established. 



Thus dispersed throMgh various members of the grand oolite formation or 

 Jura limestone we have trunks and leaves, and perhaps organs of fructifica- 

 tion, that may with much probability be all referred to our new fossil family of 

 CycadeoideaB. We have the trunks in Portland, the leaves at Whitby and in 

 Scania, and both leaves and amenta ? at Stonesfield ; and though we are as yet 

 without materials to show the specific relations of these parts to one another, 

 we have evidence to prove the duration of one, or both, the cognate families 

 of Cycadeae and Cycadeoideae to have extended from nearly the lowest to the 

 uppermost beds of the oolite series. 



M. Adolphe Brongniart has pointed out the inferences with respect to 

 climate that may be drawn from the varying character of vegetable life in the 

 three grand epochs of geological formation : viz. the great carboniferous 



* Aniialcs des Sciences Natiirolles, vol. iv. p. 200. 



t Part 3. p. 40. and Plate 30. + For June 1828. Plate 2826. 



