L. F. Ward — Famous Fossil Cycad. 47 



Carruthers in 1870 described the species twice in his well 

 known paper on Cycadean Stems from the Secondary Rocks of 

 Britain (Trans. Linn. Soc, vol. XXYI, pp. 682, 704), but does not 

 appear to have seen the specimen. He says that the formation 

 is unknown. Schimper also described the species in 1870 

 (Paleontologie Vegetale, vol. II, p. 189), but he distinctly 

 stated that he had not seen the fossil and could only copy 

 Goppert's diagnosis. 



Geinitz, in his report on the Dresden Museum bearing the 

 same title as the one previously mentioned, but dated 1873, 

 gives a short bibliography but, as it seems, inadvertently omits 

 the title of Goppert's paper above treated, in which this speci- 

 men was first described. This omission he supplies by pub- 

 lishing a supplementary page dated January 12, 1874. This he 

 was kind enough to send me at the same time as the photo- 

 graph. 



Count Solms-Laubach examined this trunk and was the first 

 to point out that Goppert's whorls of small scars represent the 

 lateral fruit-bearing axes (Einleitung in die Palaophytologie, 

 Leipzig, 1887, p. 102). He did not therefore hesitate to class 

 it as a Bennettites as Carruthers had defined that genus. 



In 1892 Capellini and Solms-Laubach referred this species 

 to Buckland's genus Cycadeoidea (I tronchi di Bennettitee dei 

 Musei Italiani, Mem. Seal. Accad. Sci. dell' 1st. di Bologna, 

 Ser. Y, Tom. II, p. 188), in which I have followed them in all 

 my papers where I have had occasion to mention it (Proc. 

 Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. IX, April 9, Washington, 1894, 

 p. 85 ; Proc. U. S.'Nat. Mus., vol. XXI, No. 1141, Washington, 

 1898, p. 198 ; Nineteenth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Surv., 1897-98, 

 Washington, 1899, pp. 601, 604, 605, pi. lix). 



II. Geological Position. 

 It will be seen from the above sketch of the history of this 

 specimen that the geological formation to which it belongs is 

 only twice alluded to, one of the references placing it in the 

 Miocene and the other in the Permian. That it could have 

 come from neither of these formations 1 have all along been 

 satisfied, and from its close resemblance to the trunks found in 

 the Lower Cretaceous of other parts of Europe, and especially 

 of America, I have believed that if its true source should ever 

 be discovered it would be found to be in beds of that age. As 

 it was found in territory now forming a part of the Austrian 

 empire, and as geological activity in Austria has been very great 

 for many years, I hoped to find that the region around Lednice 

 had been surveyed in a manner sufficently thorough to furnish 

 the data for forming a judgment as to the true age of the beds 

 in which it occurred. After some unsuccessful search among 

 the voluminous reports of the Austrian Geological Survey, I 



