J. W. Dawson—Fossil Woods from British Columbia. 47 
ArT. X.—Note on Fossil Woods from British Columbia, collected 
by Mr. Richardson ; by Principal Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.* 
IN my note of last year on the plants collected by Mr. 
Richardson in 1872, I referred to specimens of fossil coniferous 
wood from the coal-field of Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. . 
Richardson’s collections of 1878 include a much larger number 
of specimens of fossil wood from the Queen Charlotte Islands, 
Norris Island and Hornby Island, all of them apparently from 
Mesozoic rocks, and many of them associated with characteris- 
tic marine shells.of Cretaceous or Jurassic genera. They are 
principally drift trunks, though probably from not very distant 
and, and some of the specimens have been bored by Teredine 
mollusks. 
Mr. Weston, the lapidary of the Survey, has prepared up- 
wards of a hundred excellent slices of these fossils, all of which 
I rely carefully examined, with the following general re- 
sults :— 
L Conirgerovus Woops, —These are by much the most abund- 
ant in the collection, ranging in age from the probably Lower 
Cretaceous or Jurassic beds of Queen Charlotte Island to the 
probably Middle and Upper Cretaceous of Vancouver Island 
and Hornby Island. They may all be referred to the genera 
Cupressoxylon and Taxoxylon, or in other words are allied to the 
modern Cypresses and Yews, trees which range with very little 
modification of type from the Mesozoic to the modern peri 
ipressoxylon.—This genus is characterized by distinct con- 
centric rings of growth, round discs or bordered pores on the 
walls of the fibers in one or two series, resin cells (which are, 
however, often very obscure in the fossil specimens), and simple 
medullary ra 
_ One of the most common woods of this type in the collec- 
tions from the Queen Charlotte Islands, Vancouver Island and 
ornby Island, is of the same character with the wood of the 
modern Sequoia gigantea of California, and probably belonged 
to an allied tree. 
Another from Vancouver Island, with two rows of pores on 
each fiber, is scarcely distinguishable from specimens of the 
ordinary California Redwood, in the collection of Prof. Gray, 
te Cambridge, who has kindly given me specimens for com- 
son. 
Another species, differing from the above in its very short 
medullary rays, and having one row of ng on the walls 
the fibers, occurs at Queen Charlotte and Vancouver Islands. 
* From proof received in advance of the publication of the article in the Report 
Canes 
