DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES— SMIL ACEiE. 93 



where the remains are preserved, a soft white clay cut in small cuboidal 

 pieces by cleavage They are narrow, two to four millimeters broad, not can- 

 aliculate, but with a middle nerve sometimes indistinct, and narrow interme- 

 diate veinlets very close and thin, the ones nearest the borders somewhat 

 thicker; the characters are seen in the enlarged figure A a. The seeds are 

 numerous, more or less imbedded into the clay, and therefore of different 

 aspect according to the plane of their position into the matrix ; small, aver- 

 aging two millimeters in length and only half as broad, ovate-rounded at one 

 end, obtusely pointed at the other, with perigynia of the same form but 

 slightly broader, forming rings around tlie achenia. Their different forms are 

 figured enlarged double in b and fou^r times larger in 3 a. Fig. d represents 

 apparently a seed separated from its envelope, and fig. c a very small one, with 

 the achenium attached to the base and not in the middle of the perigynium. 

 All these different appearances result merely from the angle and degree 

 of compression of these small organs. The fragments of leaves are related 

 to those described by Heer in Spitzb. Fl., p. 48, pi. vi, fig. 45, as represent- 

 ing a fragment of the culm of Cyperus ardicus; but this has no trace of a 

 middle nerve. The seeds are comparable to those of Carex antiqua, Heer 

 (Bait. Fl., p. 28, pi. iii, figs. 18-20), but these do not have larger perigynia, 

 forming borders as in ours. 



Habitat. — Golden, South Mountain, in white soft clay, with remains of 

 Flabellaria Zinkeni (Capt. E. Berthoud). 



CORONARIil. 



S MILAGES. 



The species of this order of plants inhabit at the present time the trop- 

 ical and temperate regions of both hemispheres. We have in the North 

 American flora fourteen species; Europe has only three or four lefl in the 

 Mediterranean regions. This small number is remarkable indeed compared 

 with the great predominance of species of this order in the Tertiary flora of 

 the same country ,.for no less than forty-four are described by Eurojjean palajon- 

 tologists from the Miocene of the south of France and Italy. A number 

 of fragments of leaves of Smilax have been observed in the Lower Lignitic 

 measures at Golden and Black Buttes; but they are mostly specifically inde- 

 terminable. The best specimens were obtained at Carbon. None have been 



