424 Solms-L cutback —On the Fructification 
cases the outer surface shows a network of projecting ridges 
separating deep rhomboid cavities from one another. Cla- 
ihropodium foratum > Sap. 1 , is a good example of this state 
of preservation. 
But the leaf-armour, viewed from without, shows other 
unevennesses of surface in varying numbers and irregular dis- 
tribution, having a wh oiled appearance. Where these are 
well preserved, they are seen to be the transverse fractures 
of smaller leaves arranged round a centre of their own 2 . 
They are leafy lateral branches which have forced their way 
through between the leaf-bases, considerably altering their 
shape, and which terminate in inflorescences or fructifications 
of very peculiar construction. These fructifications are at 
present known only in one species, Bennettites gibsonianus , 
Carr., in which their preservation is evidently due to 
the shortness of the axis, which prevents the spadix, as the 
structure may be termed, from rising above the surface of the 
leaf-bases. In all the other forms as yet described they pro- 
jected above the surface ; consequently the upper free portion 
has disappeared, and the middle of the transverse fracture is 
occupied by the transverse section of the axis. 
It is on the sum total of these characters that Carruthers 
has founded his group Bennettiteae, which he would have us 
regard as a subdivision of Cycadeae. But his own account of 
the structure of the fructification is sufficient to show that we 
are dealing here with a tribe of plants quite distinct from 
Cycadeae ; they may perhaps be coordinated with Cycadeae, 
but they certainly cannot be subordinated to them. Judging 
by the vegetative characters only, which recur in the same 
characteristic manner in countless stems, the nature of the 
fructification being known only in one species, Bennettites 
gibsonianus , we arrive at the surprising result that all the 
Jurassic and Neocomian stems which are termed Cycas- stems, 
so far as anything is known of their structure, belong to 
Bennettiteae, and that not a single one of them has been 
1 See Paleontologie Frar^aise, terrain jurassique, vol. II, tab. 54. 
2 See Carruthers, loc. cit., pi. 58, fig. 3. 
