94 G. R. Wieland — Historic Fossil Cycads. 



the development of methods for the study of rocks in thin 

 sections. It is hence of some interest to record that, following 

 my studies of American Cycads, I have recently had the oppor- 

 tunity of seeing- both of these famous fossil plants, as well as 

 the equally interesting Will iamsonia casts of the James Yates 

 series of the Jardin des Plantes and other collections, and 

 also the unique Triassic form Anomozamites of the Natural 

 History Museum at Stockholm. And indeed all of these fossils 

 have proven so unexpectedly characteristic that I deem it of 

 use to give here a brief account from my notes as intended 

 mainly for a taxonomic study of the American Fossil Cj'cads, 

 now in course of preparation for the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington. 



(1) Cycadeoidea etrusca. — The features of this segment of 

 a columnar trunk are already familiar through the descriptions 

 and figures of Capellini and Solms. The specimen is of great 

 beauty, the texture dense, the color quite dark, the general 

 outer appearance somewhat intermediate to the Wyoming 

 Cycadella and Cycadeoidea nigra from Colorado. Numer- 

 ous young fruits are present, and through the great courtesy 

 of Senator Capellini I was enabled to study thin sections pre- 

 pared from one of these some years since. Especially the thin 

 section of the young axis figured by Solms is of even greater 

 interest than I had anticipated ; for although the tissues of the 

 sporophyll rachides are mostly broken down, the entire and 

 uncompressed outlines of both the sporangia and the walls of 

 the synangia of the usual Cycadeoidea (Marattiaceoid) form 

 seen in the American specimens, are certainly often present. 

 Only the individual cells of the outer or palisade layer of the 

 synangia do not seem to be conserved. An outline of a synan- 

 gium cut in the longitudinal transverse direction is quite dis- 

 tinct ; while an obliquely cut synangium shows three adjacent 

 sporangia tilled full of collapsed (or desiccated) pollen grains, 

 the enclosing locular walls being very perfectly conserved. 

 The pollen is seemingly mature, and the synangia are even 

 larger than in C. dacotensis, although the fruits are of a much 

 smaller size. 



The small central ovulate cone, no more than a centimeter 

 long, is very perfectly outlined, the short stalked and minute 

 ovules distinct. In size and general structure these fruits may 

 eventually prove more like those of Cycadella than C. daco- 

 tensis. From the rather small size of the staminate fronds, it 

 seems that these were more reduced than in C. dacotensis or 

 C. ingens / but whether they were bipinnate, pinnate, or sim- 

 ply consisted in a single blade, bearing synangia laterally 

 inserted, much as the megaspores are borne by the carpophylls 

 of Cyeas, remains impossible to say. These small fructifi- 



