290 Sinnott and Bartlett — Coniferous Woods. 



To this general group, at least, whatever we may believe its 

 affinities to have been, our fossil evidently belongs. In the 

 shallow and thin-walled rays, the scarcity of Flattened pitting 

 in the tracheids and the occurrence of traumatic resin canals, 

 it resembles Brachyoxylon and Paracedroxylon, but these 

 genera like almost all related types entirely lack wood paren- 

 chyma, which we have shown to be abundant in our material. 

 Miss Holden, however, has recently proposed the genus Para- 

 oupressinoxylon to include those woods which resemble true 

 Cupressinoxyla in the possession of wood parenchyma but are 

 believed to be really araucarian in affinity, from the absence of 

 "Bars of Sanio." It is under this genus, then, that our fossil 

 should evidently find its place. 



Miss Holden describes two species. One of these, P. 

 cedroides, from the Jurassic of Yorkshire, possesses traumatic 

 resin canals, as does our wood, but differs in the structure of 

 its rays which are thick-walled and pitted. The other species, 

 P. cupressoides, from the same locality and horizon, and also 

 apparently from the Paritan Cretaceous of New Jersey, agrees 

 with our type in having thin-walled rays ; but traumatic resin 

 canals were not found and its other characters, particularly 

 those of the lateral ray pits, are too vaguely described to estab- 

 lish its identity with our fossil. The structure of other 

 Cupressinoxylon-like fragments from the same New Jersey 

 locality is very briefly described by Miss Holden and with 

 some of these it is possible that our fossil may be identical. 

 She has proposed no other specific names, however. There is 

 also the possibility that our species is Cxipressinoxylon pid- 

 cJiellum Knowlton from a Potomac locality between Petersburg 

 and City Point, Ya., a type which he mentions as possessing 

 very narrow tracheids ; but in this case, too, the description is 

 not definite enough to make identity at all certain. As before 

 remarked, Knowlton's sections are not available for compari- 

 son. No other course has seemed feasible than to describe our 

 fossil as new. 



Correlation with Impressions. 



With, what leaf and stem impressions these two fossil woods 

 should be correlated we can not be certain, since no leaf-bear- 

 ing twigs with structure preserved could be obtained. Asso- 

 ciated with the lignites and charcoals, however, were found 

 impressions of Nageiopsis, Arthrotaxopsis, Brachyphyllum, 

 Spheuolepis and " Sequoia " (Geinitzia). The wood of 

 Brachyphyllum (Brachyoxylon of Hollick and Jeffrey) has 

 been identified, and bears no resemblance to either of our 

 fossils. Hollick and Jeffrey (1. c.) have likewise described the 

 wood of one of the " Sequoias " of the Raritan formation of 



