346 S topes. — A New Araucarioxylon from New Zealand. 
own Fig./‘ makes it clear that the apparently thick-walled tracheides are in 
reality only tracheides more or less occupied by a plugging exudation from 
the rays While I think that the excessive thickness indicated by 
Professor Lignier is probably due to resin deposited round the wall 
(cf. Text-fig. i, x), it is certain that the view that these tracheides do have 
thickened walls is correct. Professor Jeffrey’s figures are on a very small 
scale of magnification, and are taken from a specimen in which the pheno- 
menon is not nearly so fully developed as in other cases, and they do not 
suffice to disprove the view that these tracheides have thickened walls as well 
as resinous contents. Reference to my PL XX, Photo 4, as well as Text- 
fig. i, will make it abundantly clear that in this fossil the walls are thicker 
Text-fig. 3. Tangential section showing the ‘resin spools’ r.s. on either side of the rays. 
than in the adjacent tracheides, (1) because there the thick walls are, and 
(2) because where the rest of the wood cells with their thinner walls are some- 
what crushed and distorted, as in Photo 3, the rows on either side of the ray 
are rounded and uncrushed, and stand out as of sturdier build even in the 
cases where they are empty of their resin contents. In the living Agathis 
australis , where a similar, though less marked, phenomenon occurs, the 
thickening of the wall in the region of the ray is readily observable and 
is well figured by Thomson (T3, PI. V, Fig. 44 b). 
Penhallow made a comparison between these ‘ resin-spools ’ and the 
trabeculae of Sanio. This could only have been suggested by the ordinary 
cases where the amount of the deposit is very small. Had such an example 
as the present fossil been the first to be observed, no such comparison 
could have been made. 
