144 MR. A. B, RENDLE’S REVISION 
It is impossible to say what Faujas’s fruit was, probably not a 
Nipzdites; Jussieu, Desfontaines, Lamarck, and Thouin, who 
saw specimens, noticed a great resemblance to fruits of the 
Areca Palm. Brongniart also includes among Monocotyledons 
of unknown family a monotypic genus of his own, Pandano- 
carpum, “very common in the isle of Sheppey.” From the de- 
scription (p. 135), his P. oblongum might be our Nipadites 
umbonatus or N. lanceolatus, or perhaps a collective species 
including all the more elongated fruits. He says it has the 
greatest analogy with the fruits of Pandanus, and scarcely doubts 
its belonging to this ora closely allied genus. 
In the ‘ Lethea Geognostica’ (1837), a mere bibliographical 
work, Bronn substitutes Cocites for Cocos; while Endlicher 
(‘Genera Plantarum,’ p. 257) calls it Burtinia, a new geuus of 
fossil Palms. Brongniart’s Pandanocarpum Endlicher takes up 
(ib. p. 244), but definitely locates at the end of Pandanex as 
“ Pandanea fossilis,” immediately after Phytelephas and ipa, 
which are “ genera Pandaneis affinia.” 
The genus Wipadites was founded by Bowerbank in 1840, 
when appeared the first and only published part of his ‘ History 
of the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the London Clay.’ He describes 
thirteen species, one of which, V. Parkinsonis, is Brongniart’s 
Cocos Parkinsonis ; while he suggests that WV. wmbonatus may be 
Pandanocarpum oblongum, Brongn. The author shows reason 
for rejecting the name Pandanocarpum in favour of Nipadites, 
which emphasizes the relation of the fossils to the recent genus 
Nipa. So near, in fact, is this relation, that one is tempted to 
follow Ettingshausen, who, in a list in the ‘ Proceedings of the 
Royal Society, xxiv. p. 393, reduces all the species to Nipa. The 
only consideration which leads me to keep up the paleontological 
suffix is the uncertainty which must always attach to the specific 
diagnosis of fossils based, as it often necessarily is, on material 
which would be deemed quite inadequate in the case of recent 
plants. 
As Bowerbank points out, the fruits of Mipadites are never 
ageregated into several seéded portions, as in Pandanus; but 
closely resemble those of Nipa fruticans, a dwarf palm of some- 
what doubtful affinity, frequenting the brackish estuaries and 
littoral marshes of India and Malaya as far as Borneo, New 
Guinea, and the Philippines. Both are drupes with a thin 
epicarp, fibrous mesocarp, and somewhat indurated endocarp. 
