GYMNOSPERMvE. 



83 



two or three of which are visible according to the position in which the branchlet has 

 been embedded, or with the points slightly spreading and falcate. 



The foliage is adequately represented by two or three exceptionally fine specimens, 

 and innumerable smaller branchlets. The largest measures seven inches in length, and 

 the principal stem is clothed with relatively long, adpressed, decurrent, scale-like leaves, 

 with points free and acute. The lateral branchlets are much subdivided, branching at 

 angles of about 45° ; the ultimate shoots are alternate, rarely exceeding twenty millimetres 

 in length, and have the appearance of very finely plaited cord. The branchlets seem 

 usually to have been shed in segments of about the size represented (PI. XIX, fig. 4)» 

 Figs. 1, 2 (PI. XIX) being exceptional. The cones are globular or slightly oblong, about 

 fourteen millimetres long and composed of ten hexagonal scales. The scales quit the 

 axis at nearly right angles, are irregular in size and form, with the head having unequal 

 sides and ornamented with wrinkles converging to a nearly central boss or prominence 

 elongated transversely to the axis. Two scales are sometimes soldered together, but the 

 basal ones are not united as in the Bournemouth C. taxiformis. The cones occur singly 

 or in clusters, sometimes of six or seven, and are seated on short footstalks five or six 

 millimetres in length, to which they always remain attached. I have not hitherto found 

 a cone attached to a leafy branchlet, but the footstalk is often clothed with scale-like 

 leaves, sufficing to show that the cones and foliage really belong to the same species. 

 The seeds have not yet been observed, 

 owing no doubt to the unfavorable nature 

 of the matrix. 



The cones and foliage united, present 

 all the characters of a true Cypress. The 

 foliation of many living species is very 

 similar, but ours agrees in its most minute 

 characters with that of Cupressus funebris, 

 an Oriental variety of C. sempervirens, and 

 C. torulosa. The presence of cones enable 

 us to unite it more definitely with the 

 latter, and to say that the Antrim species 

 was, if not absolutely identical with the 

 magnificent C. torulosa, so near it that 

 it would, if living, not be separated spe- 

 cifically or even made a variety, so far 

 as fruit and foliage go. The cones in 

 the living species, as in the fossil, occur 

 in great abundance, either solitary or in 

 clusters, and detach themselves when ripe 

 from the foliage and fall singly, or more rarely, two or more on a stem. The identity of 



Fig. 33. — Cupressus obtusa. (Veitch's ' Manual of the 

 Coniferse.') 



