SPENCER : THE AFFINITY OF DADOXYLON TO CORDAITES. 97 
is remarkable for its beautiful state of preservation, and also as being 
regarded by Prof. Renault and other French Fossil Botanists, as 
being identical with that of the wood of Cordaites, which they regard 
as belonging to the Cycadere. 
The following extract from Witham's work on the "Internal 
Structure of Fossil Plants," will show that even Witham himself 
was well aware of some of the differences between Pinites and 
modern Pines. " These fossil trees," he says, " all present a texture 
very intimately allied to that of our present Coniferse, but, as has 
been shown, differing in certain respects, namely, in most instances 
the want of concentric rings, and in all cases having reticulations 
or areoles in two or three series, on two opposite walls of the elong- 
ated cellules. In one or two instances the areoles approach very 
closely to those of the Pines. It is however certain that hitherto 
no structure precisely resembling that of the Coniferse in every 
respect has been found in the Mountain Limestone Series or in the 
Coal formation." 
Endlicher changed the name of the genus from Pinites to Dad- 
oxylon (meaning pine or torch wood) by which it is now generally 
known, but it is also known under several other names, such as 
Araucarites, Araucarioxylon, &c, all denoting the resemblance of 
its woody structure to that of the Araucaria or Norfolk Island Pine, 
but the term Dadoxylon is preferable, because it leaves the question 
of its affinities an open one. 
It is a singular fact that Dadoxylon does not appear to have 
grown in the same low-lying localites as the coal producing plants, 
although it is frequently found with them in the sandstone rocks 
and in the shales. After many years of patient research in coal 
ball material, in which the coal forming plants occur in a beauti- 
ful state of preservation, I have not succeeded in finding a single 
fragment of Dadoxylon. But in the nodules which occur in the 
marine strata overlying the Hard Bed Coal, the coal in which the 
coal balls occur, fragments of small stems and branches of Dadoxylon 
are occasionally met with embedded among marine shells, such as 
Goniatites, Nautili, Aviculopectens and many other sea shells. 
These wood specimens are generally destitute of the bark, but 
