146 MR. A. B. RENDLE’S REVISION 
Bowerbank’s figures will show that some of his names, Mipa- 
dites clavatus for instance, might be accounted for in this way. 
I have seen no fossils at all like ripe fruits of Wipa fruticans, 
which has always the broad, often flattened or even incurved apex 
witha central umbo; and I might point out that the shape of the 
upper part of the fruit, whether rounded, obtuse, or pointed, is 
a valuable character for diagnosis, as it is not influenced by 
compression by surrounding fruits, the top portion being quite 
free. 
In his ‘ Synopsis’ (1845) and ‘Genera et Species Plantarum 
Fossilium’ (1850), Unger follows Bowerbank, and quotes his 
thirteen species of Nipadites under the Order Pandanex, while 
under Palmew he cites Endlicher’s Burtinia. Ettingshausen, on 
the other hand, in the ‘ Sitzungsber. Akad. Wiss. Wien’ (1852), 
viil., reduces eleven to a single species, which he calls WVipadites 
Bowerbankii, while the remaining two, VV. semiteres and N. pyra- 
midalis, he unites as N. semiteres, but in a list published in 
the Proc. Roy. Soc. 1879, he rejects WV. Bowerbankii, making 
seven of the eleven species formerly included therein syno- 
nymous with his Mipa Burtini, restoring two others, and redu- 
cing two more to 4 single species. He, moreover, calls them all 
Nipa. 
In the Ann. Sci. Nat. (Botany), 1862, Saporta describes, from 
the lower lignite near Beleodéme and Vallée de Vede in the 
South-east of France, two fruits which he calls Carpolithes and 
places as “ Monocotyledone ?, incerta sedis ;” but in a subsequent 
paper in the Mém. Soc. Géol. he makes them congeneric with 
the Mipadites of the London Clay. I have seen no specimens, 
but his figures bear no resemblance to fruits of this genus ; more- 
over, they are not erect, but have evidently been attached at the 
side of the base. 
Watelet has described a species from the Paris basin, which 
he includes, I think rightly, in Mipadites. 
The latest and most complete revision is that of Schimper in 
bis ‘Traité Paléont. Végétale.’ Six species are recognized : 
NV. Burtini, including the large Belgian specimens and six of 
Bowerbank’s species ; WV. Parkinsoni (sic), including NV. lanceo- 
latus, Bowerb.; NV. semiteres, Bowerb., with WV. pyramidalis as a 
synonym, following Ettingshausen; Saporta’s two species and 
Watelet’s one. Three of Bowerbank’s, one of which, WV. ellip- 
ticus, iS rather distinct, are omitted. Schimper probably never 
