GYMNOSPERMtE. 



43 



Genus — Athrotaxis. 



This is a small genus of three to four species, nearly allied to Sequoia, and inhabiting 

 Van-Diemen's Land. They bear small ovate or globular and woody cones of many scales, 

 of about the size of a hazel nut ; and scale-formed, either closely inlaid or open and 

 incurved leaflets. They are small trees, growing near to water, and are tolerably 

 hardy. They are known as Jointed Yews, from their jointed branchlets, and are restricted 

 to a few localities and occur only in limited numbers. 



Athrotaxis (?) suhulata, sp. nov. PL XI, except fig. 1. 

 London Clay, Isle of Sheppey. 



The leaflets are spiral in eight rows, thick, scale-formed, closely inlaid, broadly tri- 

 angular, falcate, keeled on the back, and concave on the inner face. The branchlets 

 fork irregularly, and are from five to ten millimetres in diameter. The cones are 

 solitary on the ends of the branchlets. The only fruiting specimen known is almost 

 globular and measures but little more than ten millimetres in diameter by twelve milli- 

 metres in length, and it is composed of over twenty imbricated scales. 



Fragments of stems clothed with leaflets are occasionally met with, washed out of 

 the Sheppey cliff's. These resemble branchlets of the existing Athrotaxis selaginoides, 

 but the determination rests almost entirely upon a single small cone, which in its form, 

 appears to approach much more nearly to Athrotaxis than to any other genus of Coni- 

 ferae. Carruthers concurs in the view that with the material no other determination 

 is possible. The foliage also resembles, but more distantly, that of Bacrydium balansa, 

 certain Araucarias, &c. 



Tribe III.— TAXEvE. 



The Taxeae comprise Taxus, Ihrreya, Ginkgo, Phyllocladus, Bacrydium, and Ph(Ero- 

 sphcsra. They are distinguished by their seeds not being collected into cones, each ovule 

 growing singly and being protected by a fleshy disk, or forming a drupe. The leaves are 

 narrow and veinless, or expanded, with the forked venation of Perns. They are occa- 

 sionally large, even gigantic, trees, as Bacrydium taxifolium, and occur in the milder 

 climates of both hemispheres, extending on elevated regions across the tropics. 



Lindley considered the Taxeae a more primitive type than the cone-bcuriiig Conifers, 



