81 
limestone interpolation, “quite free from sand and clay’'. They 
are simply the more durable cycads and conifers which could 
better withstand maceration. With Brachyphyllum twigs and 
Pagiophyllum twigs and cones, there are cycad pinnules and a 
small double whorl of smooth bracts surmounting a heavy 
stem (?), called WiUiamsonia texana. These are all of a lower 
Potomac caste, and accompany Neocomian invertebrates. A 
reference to this paper, page 882 of the 4th edition of Dana’s 
“Manual”, implies that Cycadeoidea munita, a Kansas form of 
equivalent age, also occurs in Texas. But if any petrified cycads 
other than those mentioned have ever been found in Texas, the 
fact has wholly escaped the writer. And similarly the Alberta 
type here illustrated stands alone, with only the partial exception 
of a single Cycas-like seed from the Cretaceous of Vancouver 
island, described by Dawson. 
Cycadeoidea Sternbergii sp. nov. 
Plates IX and X 
Type consisting in the cast and carbonized portions of a 
large armour fragment (with one lesser armour superficies) 
in the collections of the Geological Survey, Canada, 
at Ottawa. Found by Charles M. Sternberg near Red 
Deer river, Alberta, along the west branch of Sand Hill 
creek, in the uppermost Belly River beds, near the Pierre 
overlap. 
In many of the cycad eous plants ancient and modern, as 
the large fronds wilt down, the heavy woody bases long persist 
in the form of a quite continuous heavy outer envelope of the 
cortical region, the so-called armour. This armour tends to a 
continual excision by layers of periderm which form in the 
outer and still green tissues of the individual leaf bases. And 
this cutting-off process, if at all rapid, would soon leave the 
stem quite smooth- and covered by a thick, soft bark tissue not 
very different from the soft bark of a concolour fir. But, 
especially in the cycadeoids, there is a heavy growth of chaff 
or ramentum in many of the species which protected the old 
leaf bases from decay, and slowed down their excisions. The 
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