DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES— MYRICACE^. 129 



across the point of the outer lobes. Now, I have a leaf of Aralia 'yapyracea 

 of Japan, which closely resembles the fossil species, and which I selected 

 of the smallest possible size, in order to have it in herbarium. It measures 

 fifty-eight centimeters across, also from the point of the lobes. The largest 

 leaves of Platanus nobilis, twenty centimeters broad, and of P. Haydenii, 

 Newby., sixteen centimeters across the lobes, are of the largest and finest 

 obtained fossil specimens. Leaves of our Platanus occidentalism thirty centi- 

 meters broad, are not rare. Of living Magnolia, the leaves measure as high 

 as thirty centimeters long and fourteen centimeters broad ; the Papaw, when 

 growing under the shade, has still larger leaves, thirty-two centimeters by 

 fifteen, and so on. As yet I have not seen, except for this Myrica, any fossil 

 leaves of a size superior to those of the present flora in comparing speci- 

 mens of the same generic type. This case would therefore look like an 

 anomaly, and suggest the probability of a different relation. I should have ad- 

 mitted this view, if, in the original determination of this species, I had not had 

 for point of comparison Myrica {Comptonid) grandlfolia, Ung. (Fl. of Sotzka, 

 p. 31, pi. viii, fig 1), whose preserved fragment, the upper part of a leaf only, 

 measures fourteen centimeters long and five centimeters broad, while a whole 

 and large leaf of the living Comptonia asplenoides is only seven centimeters 

 long and one centimeter broad. As there are some species of the same group 

 with leaves intermediate in size, M. hakeafolia, Sap., M. insignis, described 

 here below, etc., I cannot see in the difference of size a sufficient reason to 

 separate from this genus a leaf which by its other characters seems evidently 



referable to it. 



§ 1. — Leaves entire, nndulate, or dentate. 



myrica Torreyi, Lcsqz. 



Plate XVI, Figs. 3-10. 



Mynca Torreyi, Lesqx., Annual Report, 1872, p. 392. — Schimper, Pal. Y6g6t., iii, p. 586. 



Leaves membranaceous, narrowly lanceolate, tapering up to a long linear acumen, gradually nar- 

 rowed to a short broad petiole, distantly dentate; nervation marginal. 



The leaves are variable in size, from four to fifteen centimeters long, 

 including the petiole, and from eight to thirty millimeters broad below 

 the middle. Gradually decreasing upward to a long narrow acumen, they 

 are more rapidly narrowed to a short, broad, sometimes half-winfjed, 

 petiole. Their nervation is marginal, a distinct though narrow vein fol- 

 lowing up quite near the borders, where it is joined by the secondary 

 nerves, simple or branching, and slightly bending inward at the point of 



9 T F 



