102 SPEXCER : THE AFFINITY OF DADOXYLON TO CORDAITE?. 
families, yet its large area taken into consideration along with that 
of the bark would have had a direct bearing upon the affinities of 
the plants. 
The great height and girth of the fossil trees, taken along with 
a certain resemblance of their woody structures to those of the Pines, 
would have a tendency to bias his mind in favour of the Pine family ; 
moreover, up to Witham's time, very little appears to have been 
done in the study of the internal structures of modern plants. The 
fact that some of the cycads had a woody structure more closely 
resembling Pinites than did that of the Pines, has been made known 
to us since Witham's day. 
Cordaites. 
M. Brongniart, Prof. Renault, and other French Fossil Botanists 
have described specimens of fossil plants closely resembling, if not 
identical with, those of Dadoxylon, from the Coal-field of St. 
Etienne, under the name of Cordaites, which they affirm to be true 
cycads. In the same coal-field large quantities of fruits, leaves, and 
even flowers of cycads have been found and described by Brongniart, 
Renault and others. So remarkably well preserved are the fossils 
from St. Etienne that it is said the " broad leaves of Cordaites show 
their stomata and the fruits their polen grains." In this respect they 
resemble the Halifax leaves which show their stomata quite as well, 
while vast numbers of various kinds of fruits and spores, many with 
their pollen grains admirably preserved, abound in the Halifax 
material. 
Cordaites attained a large size, and in almost every respect 
seem to be the Dadoxylon of the French Coal-field ; the structure 
of its wood has long been known to be identical with that of 
Dadoxylon (Pinites) Brandlingi. 
Some time ago Dr. Hovelacque, of Paris, sent me a piece of 
Cordaites from which I have cut and ground many sections, all of 
them shew the structure of the wood remarkably well, but no better 
than many of my sections of Dadoxylon from the Carboniferous 
formation. In comparing sections of Cordaites with similar sections 
of Dadoxylon I can detect no organic difference between them, and 
therefore I must regard them as being identical both in structure 
and external appearance. 
