GYMNOSPERMJ^. 



27 



These characters enable the foliage at Bournemouth to be distinguished with some 

 certainty, though it would be less easy to identify it from distant localities.^ 



The evidence favouring its reference to Cupressus is that cones, identical except in 

 some minor characters, with cones of an existing species are found in the Marine Beds at 

 Bournemouth with the same foliage ; an identical cone and other fragments of cones 

 (PI. IX, figs. 28, 29 ; PI. V, fig. 14) being also associated with the foliage in the 

 fluviatile beds. The imbricated foliage is thus absolutely connected with true 

 Cypress cones. The more leafy foliage is seen on several of the figured specimens (PI, I) 

 to be joined to this, and their constant association together, in at least all the freshwater 

 beds in which either occur, would alone render it far more probable that they belong to 

 the same than to different conifers. 



Male flowers, probably of this species, are figured (PI. I, fig. 12, and enlarged at 

 12 fl), and small pellets of amber are frequently associated with the twigs. 



The species is not met with at Bournemouth lower than the horizon of rolled blocks 

 marked z in the Coast Section (' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,' vol. xxxviii, p. 4, 1882, " Des- 

 cription of the Bournemoutli Beds," part 2), in some of which it occurs abundantly mixed 

 with broken cones, the distichous foliage being finer and (PI. Y, fig. 13) more sharply 

 pointed in these than at higher horizons. It is quite absent from the beds called Gleichenia- 

 beds in the section, and from all the " Lower Coastguard-beds,'' but suddenly reappears 

 in great abundance in the highest bed immediately under, and continues throughout the 

 " Black Bed." Here, wherever the clay is fissile, large sheets may be obtained thickly 

 sprinkled with its shoots, mingled with much macerated leaf matter, seeds, &c. (PI. I, 

 figs. 1 and 2). 



De la Harpe figured a specimen in the * Geological Survey Memoir on the Isle of 

 Wight,' identifying it with Unger's Cupressites taxiformis from Haring, in the Tyrol. 

 Some of the foliage from other parts of Europe, determined as Sequoia Hardtii, &c., 

 may not improbably belong to this species. 



The cones are so distinctly those of the Cypress,^ that no doubt whatever as to their 

 genus can be entertained. Their wrinkled mucronate surface 

 and rectangular form, together with their base formed of four 

 scales soldered together, is reproduced in such well-known 

 species as C. sempervire7is, C. torulosa, C. inacrocarpa, and 

 C. funebris. The latter species, indeed, further resembles our 

 fossil in the possession of not dissimilar dimorphic foliage. 

 This character appears, as in the Taxodieae, rarer in existing than 



in fossil species, and is only shared by two species of CallUris and some imperfectly known 



^ The fig. 1 D of 6'. polymorpha on pi. ii of the second part of Saporta's ' Etudes sur la Vegetation,' 

 seems to be of this species, for not only is the foliage identical in the minutest details, but the cone attached 

 is represented with the peculiar trefoil-shaped scale at its base, and with the number and arrangement of 

 scales characteristic of this Cupressus, 



2 Fig. 27, pi. xi, is apparently another species, and more resembles some of the Sequoia Couttsice from 

 Bovey. 



