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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIV 



sembling in their anatomical relations those of the living Pinus* 

 The latter author, however, differs diametrically in his point of 

 view from Gothan, since he regards Araucariopitys, in spite of 

 its numerous abietineous features, as none the less an araucarian 

 conifer and as indicating the derivation of the Araucarinaa from 

 an abietineous ancestry rather than the reverse, as is assumed by 

 Gothan. 



Quite recently Hollick and Jeffrey have published an exten- 

 sive memoir on the structural remains of the Cretaceous conifers 

 of Staten Island, 6 in which they describe for the first time the 

 anatomical organization of the branches, leaves and cones of a 

 number of well-known Mesozoic conifers hitherto recognized 

 from impressions alone. They reach the conclusion that the ex- 

 ternal appearance of Mesozoic conifers is in general very mis- 

 leading as to their veal affinities. The supposed Sequoias of the 

 Cretaceous, for example, turn out from the internal examina- 

 tion of all their organs not to belong to the modern genus at all 

 but to be closely related to those araucarian conifers, which are at 

 present limited in their range to the southern hemisphere. The 

 same result is reached in regard to a number of other genera, 

 which have been connected with the living Sequoiineae, Cupres- 

 sinese and even the Podocarpinea?. These authors further con- 

 clude that the general structure of Cretaceous conifers of arau- 

 carineous affinities is good evidence for the derivation of the 

 Araucarineae from a stock resembling the Abietineae and not for 

 the reverse mode of origin, which is universally accepted by 

 those whose conclusions are mainly based on a structural and 

 habital comparison of living conifers with the gymnosperms of 

 the Paleozoic, since the transitional forms are all clearly on the 

 araucarian side. 



Sinnott has recently described an araucarian wood, which in 

 the former state of our knowledge would have inevitably been 

 referred to the abietineous genus (Udroxylon Kraus. 7 From the 

 study of the ray structure of this fossil wood and from the ex- 

 amination of the tracheitis iu connection with new criteria 

 recently formulated, this author comes to the conclusion that his 

 wood represents a type of the Araucarinea\ transitional towards 



'Jeffrey, E. C, "Araucariopitys, A New Genus of Araucarians, " 

 Bot. Gazette, Dec, 1907. 



•"Cretaceous Coniferous Eemains from Kreischerville, New Yc 

 Mem. Neio York Bot. Garden, TIT, May, 1909. 



