Barber. — Cupressinoxylon vec tense. 339 
It is important rather to determine how frequently irregu- 
larities of the nature described occur in recent and fossil 
species. There appear to be no analogous cases among 
fossil woods already investigated. Conwentz mentions that 
in the amber-producing Finns succinifera the rings are 
distinctly visible to the naked eye, but under a lens they 
are found each to consist of a series of narrow rings, and 
he states further that he remembers having seen cases of 
a similar nature in other fossils 1 . Fliche figures an anasto- 
mosis between two rings of Cupressinoxylon infracretaceum 2 , 
and Seward notes the presence of partial rings in his recently 
described Pinites Ruffordi 3 . But besides such isolated 
examples there appears to be nothing resembling our 
specimens among described fossils. 
It is well known that in Dicotyledons of warmer regions 
the ring-formation, so regular with us, is deficient or absent. 
Michelia and Avicennia may be selected among many as 
resembling our fossil in the sharp character of the stem- 
rings, which nevertheless anastomose with one another, and 
thereby render the counting exceedingly difficult. 
When however we turn to recent Conifers, we meet with 
much less irregularity. It has been considered worth while, 
in books devoted to forest-botany, to record cases of partial 
or indistinct ring-formation in this group. The anomaly 
is seen to be widely extended. Of more immediate interest 
to us are such plants or parts of plants in which this 
peculiarity occurs, if not habitually, at any rate more fre- 
quently than elsewhere. 
We are told that branches are more subject to irregularities 
in wood-formation than stems 4 . In roots again, according 
to Nordlinger, it is frequently impossible to count the rings 
1 Conwentz, Monogr. d. baltischen Bernsteinbaume, 1890, p. 32. 
2 Fliche, Note sur les Nodules et bois mineralises trouves a Saint-Parres-les-Vaudes 
(Aube) dans les gres verts infracretaces, Mem. de la Soc. Acad, de l’Aube, lx, 1896. 
3 Seward, Pinites Ruffordi from the English Wealden Formation, Journal 
Linnean Society, Bot. xxxii, 417. 
4 Felix, Beitr. zur Kenntniss foss. conif. Holzer, Engler, Botan. Jahrb. iii, 1880, 
p. 265. 
