100 G. 12. Wieland — Historic Fossil Cycads. 



eighty years ago, it would have been possible to find, either 

 associated with it or remaining behind in the cliff, the block 

 containing the entire summit. Indeed, in looking through the 

 other James Yates specimens of the Jardin des Plantes, I 

 could not help hoping every moment to rind the barnacle-cov- 

 ered end of a block matching the broken end of that of the 

 main stem, and containing the missing flowers. And, although 

 I failed to observe any such with certainty, there still remains 

 a suspicion that the iron mountings of the specimen prevented 

 my search from being wholly conclusive, and that some one of 

 the beautiful accompanying series of Williamsonia flower 

 buds was really borne on the forked peduncle. At least, this 

 not proving so, it seems to me that if there exists at Cambridge 

 or elsewhere in England a slab bearing a pair of Williamsonia 

 fructifications, with the peduncles broken away at their bases 

 and ending on a transverse fracture of the matrix, dotted over 

 with barnacles, or similarly, a fruit and a bud lying side by 

 side and oriented alike, it ought in the interests of paleontol- 

 ogy to be carried to Paris and compared with the Jardin des 

 Plantes specimen. 



I do not think I am deceived in stating that the peduncle 

 forks ; .although whether it is at first a true monopode or inte- 

 gral prolongation of the stem instead of a lateral branch, 

 is more uncertain. As already suggested, however, it appears 

 to rise monopodially, and to thus exhibit precisely that form 

 of fruiting hypothetically intermediate between Cycas and the 

 reduced laterally-borne cones and flowers of Cycadeoidea. 

 If, as must be borne in mind, the peduncular prolongation of 

 the stem bore one flower and a new phytaxis, instead of two 

 flowers, we of course have here repeated in the Jura very 

 nearly the same fruit-bearing and branching habit as in that 

 remarkable related form of the Triassic, Anomozamites. In 

 either case, however, the condition observed forms, a fortiori, 

 a connecting link of profound interest between the Cycade- 

 oidese and the Cycadacese. For, restating the case : in the female 

 Cycas, strobilar elongation of the stem following a bract series 

 or scale-leaf series, is integral — monopodial ; while here there 

 appears to be a partially restricted elongation of the stem 

 which likewise follows a bract series and is presumably capa- 

 ble of producing a fruit-bearing branch, and also of subse- 

 quent growth as a new phytaxis. There is little suggestion of 

 a fruit-bearing sympode or flowering stalk. 



Much more, — if we begin to think out hypothetically related 

 forms with much branched yet slenderer stems, netted veined 

 ( Dictyozamites) leaves and primitively plastic multiovulate 

 sporophylls, we soon arrive at a remote type of Proangiosper- 

 mous plant near to or actually a true jwe-Angiosperm, or Hemi- 

 angiosperm, as named by Newell-Arber from what is justly 



