44S (J. Ii. Wieland — William sonian Tribe. 



Fig. 6. 



Fig. 6. Williamsonia yigas. x 1/2 nearly. Typical fruit bud attached 

 to its bract-enveloped peduncle. Partly retouched photograph, furnished 

 through kindness of the officials of the Paris Museum. (One of the speci- 

 mens of the James Yates collection of Wiliiamsonias from the Hawkser and 

 Runswick Cliffs of Yorkshire, secured for the Paris Museum by Brongniart 

 in 1843.) 



redrawn by Saporta in the form reproduced in excellent style in my American 

 Fossil Cycads indicates beautiful conservation. As any one who has studied 

 such fossils can easily see. all the figures have excellence stamped upon 

 them. In particular the form of the seed and position and size of the embryo 

 are clearly disclosed. The seed, about the size of a small grain of rice, is 

 more angular than in the Cycadeoideas, showing a distinctly pentagonal to 

 hexagonal form with a rather clearly marked shoulder surmounted by five 

 to six ribs of the blow-off layer, so that with the aid of my figure 15e a most 

 perfect model of the outer form can be constructed. While the "two 

 lunate bodies " of the upper middle transverse section are, of course, none 

 other than the two cotyledons of a notably smaller embryo than is found in 

 any Cycadeoidea. Evidently the seed had a well developed albumen sur- 



