GYMNOSPERMiE. 



93 



the first appearance of the species a very long way, for none older than the Middle 

 Bagshot were previously known. Anemia subcretacea, a Fern, is also associated with it 

 both at Bournemouth and Reading. 



Specimens have been found in the Woolwich Beds of the Park-IIill cutting at 

 Croydon, resembling Athrota.vis CoiittsicB, though even more slender, but it is probable 

 that they may have belonged to the same species as this from Reading. 



DoLiosTROBUs Sternbergii, Goe^jpevt,, sp. Plates XXII and XXIII. 



Akaxjcaeites Steknbekgti, Goeppert (pars). Ettingshausen, Die Tertiare Flora von 



Hilring in Tirol, p. 36, pis. vii and 

 viii, 18.53. 



Sequoia — Heei-. Urw. d. Scliweiz, p. 310, 1864, and all later 



works. 



DoLiosTEOBUS — Marion, Coraptes rendus de I'Acad. des Sciences, 1884. 



The Bembridge Marls ; Gurnet Bay, Isle of Wight. 



The leaves are spirally arranged, awl-shape or falcate, rigid, sharply pointed, keeled 

 dorsally, grooved on their inner face ; they are very short near the bases of the branchlets 

 and reach to an extreme length of 9 millimetres, or 13 mm. if the decurrent base be 

 included. Stouter branchlets (figs. 1 and 4, Plate XXII) are clothed with denser and 

 more scale-like leaves. The branchlets seem relatively long and slender, as if the habit of 

 the tree had been lax ; and they fork irregularly, but not copiously, at a mean angle of 45°; 

 the terminal shoots being long and simple. Part of a branch (fig. 12) is marked with the 

 inlaid scars common to many of the Coniferse, resembling scale-armour, the diameter of 

 the scales being about 3 mm., their edges raised, and centres depressed, showing that 

 the branches must have been clothed with broad-based spinous leaves as in the existing 

 needle-leaved Araucaria. There are unfortunately no traces of the fruiting organs 

 among the numerous specimens I have examined, with the single exception of the 

 detached scale occurring on the specimen, fig. 5, Plate XXII. ^ It is slightly curled 

 and with thin margins, widest near the apex, which is acuminate and thickened, tapering 

 to the base, 7 mm. in width and about the same in height. 



There is thus little beyond the foliage to help us to the nature of the plant, and 

 it is hardly necessary to state that no botanist would undertake the determination 

 of any living Conifer, presented to him for the first time, on such material. The 

 palaeontologist has, however, to accept such specimens as are procurable, and to 



^ Mr. A'Court Smith, who collected them, writes that there were a number of " round discs," which 

 he chipped away in reducing the stones. He adds that their absence may also probably be due to his 

 having failed to look out for them or to recognise their nature. 



