348 UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY— TERTIARY FLORA. 



hiformis; the first on account of a distant likeness to 8. Smithiana, and the 

 other to S. Reichenhachi and S. rigida, three species recognized, the first in 

 the lower, the two others in both the upper and lower stages of the Creta- 

 ceous of Greenland. The wide distribution of Sequoia species has been 

 remarked already. But without taking into account the longevity of these 

 types, we have, to consider that if we have two Conifers merely related to 

 Cretaceous species, this cannot eliminate the testimony of Sequoia hrevifolia, 

 which is as profusely represented in the flora of Point of Rocks as Pistia, 

 and by specimens in a perfect state of preservation. One-half of the speci- 

 mens of Mr. Clcburn, besides a large number of those of Prof Hayden, 

 sliow it in its two somewhat different forms. As it is distinctly and easily 

 determined, its characters being precise, and as this Conifer is described 

 from the Miocene flora of Greenland and from that of the Baltic, its evi- 

 dence is more positive than that of the two other species of Sequoia repre- 

 sented, as yet by small fragments and merely allied to Cretaceous types. 



I consider as referable to the Eocene by analogy of distribution Sahalites 

 Grayanus and the other species of Palms. The origin of this family in the 

 Cretaceous is indeed an established fact. In one of his last letters, Saporta 

 writes, — "The type of the Palms (Jongirachis) exists in the Upper Cretaceous 

 of Provence. I have received very fine specimens of this type, which seems 

 intermediate between the Sabal and the F/icenix.'^ Unger and Goeppert 

 have published each one species from the Cretaceous of Germany, and the 

 recent discovery by Schweinfurth of a fruit, Pahnaciies rimonus, Heer, in the 

 Upper Cretaceous White Chalk of the Oasis of Chargeh, west of Thebes (about 

 25'' latitude north), is another evidence of the presence of Palms in the 

 Upper Cretaceous. That, however, remains of this kind are extremely rare, 

 even at the end of the Cretaceous, is proved by the importance attached to 

 the discovery of a fruit of this kind in a region under the tropics. From 

 the Paleocene as represented in the Floras of Gelinden and of Suzanne, 

 no species of Palms have been positively determined; for the fragments 

 described in this last flora under the generic name of Lzidoviopsis are indefi- 

 nitely referred by the authors, either to the Pandanea. or to the Palms. The 

 last reference, however, seems right. As yet, of the fifty species of fossil 

 Palms known from their fronds, twenty belong to the Miocene, especially to 

 its lower stage; eight are described from the Tertiary of Italy, without 

 reference to any of its divisions; nine are Oligocene, twelve Eocene, and one 



