2 EDWARD W. BERRY 



tion. The gigantic uncouth dinosaurs of the late Cretaceous, 

 so many of whicli have been unearthed and are now mounted in 

 our larger museums, carry us a long way back and yet we know 

 from the records, that when the breath of life left their massive 

 bulks some of the leaves that fell around them were those of 

 plane trees not very different from the leaves that strew the 

 ground in our parks in October. 



These trees have interests for the forester, the lumberman, the' 

 votary of culture and the botanist. For the latter they have an 

 especial interest because of their affinity with the figs (another 

 group of great antiquity) and their disputed position in the cur- 

 rent schemes of classification. 



A brief consideration of the Cretaceous records of Platanus 

 sheds a significant light on the place of origin of the genus. Ex- 

 cluding the Laramie formation, since its records are confused in 

 the literature with those of the basal Eocene, I have collected 

 the following references to the existence of Platanus during the 

 Cretaceous: — The oldest occurrences are two species in the Raritan 

 fonnation of the New Jersey region and two different species 

 from the lower beds of the Tuscaloosa formation of the Alabama 

 region. Very slightly younger are the strata of the Dakota 

 Group extending from Minnesota and Colorado to Texas from 

 which Lesquereux has described ten species and varieties. About 

 the same age as the latter is the Magothy formation of our North- 

 ern Atlantic coastal plain with one species and the Atane beds of 

 West Greenland with another. The somewhat younger Patoot 

 beds of West Greenland furnish one species, there is another in 

 the Ripley formation of Eastern Alabama and a third in the 

 Montana Group of Utah. These American records total sixteen 

 forms. The only other Cretaceous records known to me are the 

 not certain identification of two Dakota Group forms from the 

 Upper Cretaceous of Argentina, one certainly not a Platanus, and 

 three supposed species from the Cenomanian of Bohemia de- 

 scribed by Velenovsky and Marik. The latter I regard as refer- 

 able to the probably allied genus Credneria of Zenker. 



Regarding the authenticity of the botanical determination of 

 these various species it is probable that some of the records are 



