iO L. F. Ward — Famous Fossil Cycad. 



Art. VII. — A Famous Fossil Cycad / by Lester F. Ward. 



There is in the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology at 

 Dresden a petrified trunk of a cycad that has been known 

 for more than two centuries and a half. It is the type and 

 only known specimen of Cycadeoidea Reichenbachiana (Gopp.) 

 Cap. and Solms, the Raumeria Reichenbaehiana of Goppert. 

 It has the longest history of any specimen of its class, unless 

 we count as history the thousand years or more that the type 

 of Cycadeoidea etrusca lay upon an Etruscan tomb at Marza- 

 botto before it was discovered by Count Gozzadini in 1867 and 

 found its way in 1878 to the Geological Museum of Bologna. 



When in 1894 I made a voyage to Europe chiefly for the pur- 

 pose of studying the collections of fossil cycadean trunks in the 

 various museums preparatory to the elaboration of those of 

 America, I was not able to visit Dresden and see this specimen. 

 In 1898 Dr. H. B. Geinitz sent me a photograph of it as it 

 stood in the Dresden Museum resting on a wooden pedestal 

 made to support it. This I reproduced in my memoir on the 

 Cretaceous Formation of the Black Hills as indicated b} r the 

 Fossils Plants,* explaining the circumstances in the text.f 

 The photograph was not particularly clear and was of a light 

 brown color, somewhat pale. The half-tone process by which 

 it was reproduced brought out much that was latent in the 

 photograph and the result is a considerably better view than 

 the original. In studying this it was clear both that the 

 petioles were descending and also that the sharp angle of the 

 leaf scars was on their upper side, both of which features are 

 very rare in cycad trunks. This raised the suspicion that the 

 specimen might be inverted, and led me to remark in the foot- 

 note on page 605 of that memoir that, judging from the pic- 

 ture alone, "I should say that the trunk is here inverted, but 

 to be certain it would be necessary to examine it. It is clear 

 that in the present position the leaf scars have a decided down- 

 ward direction, which is rare but not unknown (e. g., C. Uhleri). 

 Moreover, the scars, which are subtriangular, have now their 

 sharp angle upward, which, if the specimen is right side up, 

 would indicate that the keel of the petioles was on the upper 

 side, a condition which I have met with in only two other 

 species, C. aspera and C. insolitaP 



On August 27, 1903, on my way from Vienna to Berlin, 1 

 stopped at Dresden and visited the Royal Museum. I readily 

 found the specimen still standing upon the same support as 

 when photographed by Dr. Geinitz. A glance at it was sum- 



* Nineteenth Ann. Eep. U. S. Geol. Surv., 1897-98, pi. lix. 

 flbid., pp. 601, 604, 605. 



