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REVISION OF THE GENUS NIPADITES. 143 
Revision of the Genus WMipadites, Bowerb. 
By A. B. Renpiez, M.A., B.Se., F.L.S. 
[Read Ist June, 1893.] 
(Puates VI. & VIL.) 
In the ‘ Philosophical Transactions’ for 1757 (p. 8396) Dr. James 
Parsons gives an account of some fossil fruits and other bodies 
found in the island of Sheppey by Edward Jacobs, who also sub- 
sequently published an account of them as an Appendix to his 
‘ Plante Favershamienses’ (1777). Of Parsons’s fruits, the only 
ones bearing any resemblance to Nipadites are figs. 1 and 3 on 
tab. xv., which, he says, seem to be figs petrified when hard and 
green. 
In 1784 Burtin, in his ‘ Oryctographie de Bruxelles,’ describes 
as coco-nuts some large fossil fruits from the Middle Eocene at 
Woluwe near Brussels. Numerous specimens have since been 
brought from the same beds; they are as large as coco-nuts, but 
broader and more ovate. 
In 1785 James Douglas published ‘A Dissertation on the 
Antiquity of the Earth, and on p. 25 refers to the Sheppey fruits, 
one of which, the property of Sir Joseph Banks, he figures (t. v.) 
and describes as “ aspecies of almond .... remarkable in the 
opinion of the most intelligent persons as bearing no analogy in 
size to any recent specimens of this nut discoverable in any 
quarter of the globe.” 
In 1804 Parkinson (‘ Organic Remains,’ p. 458) mentions the 
same and similar fossils, which, he says, may perhaps be referred 
to the genus Cocos. In plate vii. he figures two specimens: that 
represented in figs. 1-3 “was originally in the possession of 
Sir Joseph Banks, by whom it was presented to the British 
Museum ;” while the subject of figs. 4 and 5 “ was added to the 
collection in the British Museum by Mr. Douglas, by whom it is 
figured and described in his ingenious essay on the antiquity of 
the earth.” Plate vi. fig. 6 is probably the cast of the interior 
of a fruit of the same species, and figs. 5 and 7 the surface and 
section of an unripe specimen. 
Adolphe Brongniart, in his ‘ Prodrome ’ (1828), was the first 
to give the fossils specific names; Burtin’s is cited as Cocos 
Burtini, and Parkinson’s as C. Parkinsonis. He also includes a 
third species, “C. Faujasii, Faujas, Aun. du Mus. i. p. 445, t. 29.” 
LINN. JOURN.— BOTANY, VOL. XXX. L 
