Paleobotany. 357 



Saporta, as will be remembered, established the Proangio- 

 spermeae as a primitive quasi-gymnospermous group containing 

 the ancestors of the Monocotyls and Dicotyls, and including the 

 Cycadeoideae. But Arber, while stating that the Cycadeoideae 

 are near the Angiosperm line, in actuality relegates this family 

 to a far remoter position, inasmuch as he not only removes it 

 from the Proangiospermeae, but fails to include it in an early 

 Mesozoic complex of primitive Angiosperm ancestors which he 

 endeavors to establish as the Hemiangiospermese. For our part, 

 we find difficulty in following here. We still believe the Cyca- 

 deoideae to be a much varied group of cycads, and furthermore 

 have come to regard them as occupying a position on the very 

 borders of just such an ancestral complex as Saporta defined, 

 standing so to speak on the threshold of the Mesozoic and usher- 

 ing in the early Angiosperms. It appears to us, moreover, that 

 Arber's own conception of a "Hemiangiosperm " would on last 

 analysis find a place as comfortably near the cycadeoid line as 

 the latter is near the Cycadaceae. For it is to be remembered, 

 too, that to be adequate a classification must be sufficiently 

 elastic to admit some overlapping as knowledge of separate 

 phylae is extended. We therefore prefer the more explicit state- 

 ment of Hallier on this point, and we much like the latter's 

 characterization of the conifers as the real " half-angiosperms," 

 or " Halb-Angiospermen." Whatever difference of opinion there 

 is here, however, is quantitative rather than qualitative, and all 

 paleobotanists at least must feel greatly indebted for the origin- 

 ality and suggestiveness with which Arber has essayed the dis- 

 cussion of the most comprehensive and difficult of all botanic 

 questions. G. r. w. 



5. Les Vegetaux Fossiles et leiir Enchainements / par M. 

 Rene Zeiller. Extrait de la Revue du Mois, Paris, 10 fevrier, 

 1907, t. iii, pp. 129-149. — This is one of the most luminous of 

 the considerable number of general reviews of the recent great 

 progress in paleobotany which have appeared in the past year, 

 One of the concluding paragraphs is as follows: — 



"Quant aux Angiospermes, Monocotyledories et Dicotyledones, le prob- 

 leme est plus obscur encore, .... II nous est impossible de discerner, dans 

 les flores anterieures, aucun type qui puisse etre considere avec tant soit peu 

 de vraisemblance comme leur ayant donne naissance, et tant que nous n'aurons 

 pas recueilli de nouveaux documents, de la rencontre desquels il ne faut 

 jamais desesperer, nous demeuron dans tine complete ignorance des origines 

 de cet immense groupe de plantes." 



This view of one of the most eminent and accomplished of all 

 the authorities on fossil plants, is of course not unmindful of 

 recent great progress in our knowledge of gymnosperms as under- 

 stood better by no one than Zeiller himself. Rather does it 

 resolve itself into a conservative insistence that valid clues to the 

 origin of a group must come from within the group itself ; for 

 the last analysis can only be based on continuous series. Can it be, 

 we ask, that the paleontologic day is still in its earliest hour's, and 



