Description of some Fossil Fruits from the Chalk Formation of the South-east of England.

Abstract

The small number of plants hitherto discovered in the Chalk formation of England renders any addition to the Cretaceous flora important; I am therefore induced to lay before the Society descriptions and figures of three fruits from the Chalk and Lower greensand of Kent and Sussex, that an authentic record may be preserved of these unique and interesting relics. 1. Zamia Sussexiensis, Mantell. Plate II. fig. 1. from the lower greensand at Selmeston, Sussex. More than twenty years since I discovered a deposit of calcareous wood in the strata of greensand near Willingdon, a village about three miles to the north-west of Easrbourn, in the country of Sussex : a similar accumulation of fossil wood occurs in a sand-bank in the adjacent parish of Selmeston, at the junction of the lower green-sand with the gault, and is described in my ‘Fossils of the South Downs’ (p.76). The specimens collected from these localities consist of waterworn fragments of stems and braches, which are generally more or less perforated by boring mollusca. The structure of the wood is decidely coniferous : transverse sections present concentric circles and medullary rays, and a reticulated surface composed of distinct cellules, varying in form from the circular to the elliptical. In a longitudinal division the tubes or woody fibres are seen to be uniform, and to have their walls studded with nearly circular dises or areolé disposed in double rows, the discs being irregularly alternate, as in the recent Araucaria . In a few examples spiral vessels