1894. ^ BRITISH PALM. 205 



in 1777. Of two of the fruits, figs, i and 3 on plate xv. of the Royal 

 Society paper, Parsons says they seem to be figs petrified when hard 

 and green. In 1785, James Douglas, in a work entitled "A Disserta- 

 tion on the Antiquity of the Earth," refers to the Sheppey fruits, one 

 of which he makes out to be " a species of almond," but somewhat 

 qualifies his determination when he further characterises it as " remark- 

 able m the opinion of the most intelligent persons, as bearing no analogy 

 in size to any recent specimens of this nut discoverable in any quarter 

 of the globe." This particular specimen was the property of Sir 

 Joseph Banks, and is probably identical with one of the two figured 

 nearly twenty years later by James Parkinson, a London surgeon, the 

 author of " Organic Remains." By this time the fossils, through Sir 

 Joseph Banks and Mr. Douglas, had become the property of the British 

 Museum. In the " Organic Remains," the green figs and the species 

 of almond become allied to the coco-nut, Parkinson suggesting that 

 they may, perhaps, be referred to the genus Cocos. 



A year before the publication of Douglas's " Dissertation," Burtin, 

 in his " Oryctographie de Bruxelles," had already described as coco- 

 nuts some large fossil fruits found in beds of Middle Eocene age at 

 Woluwe near Brussels. Others have since been brought from the same 

 locality, and may be seen along with the Sheppey fossils in the 

 geological department at the Natural History Museum ; they are as 

 large as coco-nuts, but broader and more egg-shaped. 



None of these fruits received specific names till 1828, when 

 Adolphe Brongniart, in his " Prodrome," accepting Parkinson's 

 generic determination, dedicated the Belgian ones to Burtin, as Cocos 

 Buvtini, and those from Sheppey to Parkinson, as C. Parkinsouis. 



In 1840, James Bowerbank, who had accumulated an enormous 

 number of fossil plants from Sheppey, brought out the first and only 

 part of his " History of the Fossil Fruits and Seeds of the London 

 Clay." The first portion of this book is devoted to a discussion of 

 the affinities of the particular specim.ens above-mentioned and others 

 more or less resembling them. From a careful study of a large 

 number, Bowerbank was led to reject the idea of a close alliance 

 with the coco-nut, and also the name Pandanocarpum, applied to 

 some of them by Brongniart, to indicate what he considered to be 

 their great analogy with the fruits of Pandanus, the Screw-pine. As 

 Bowerbank points out, the fruits are never aggregated into portions 

 containing several seeds as occurs in Pandanus, while on the other 

 hand they closely resemble those of Nipa fntticans. In both cases 

 we find the thin outer skin, or epicarp, the fibrous central portion, or 

 mesocarp, and the somewhat indurated internal endocarp, protecting 

 the single seed. Each is in fact a drupe constructed on the same 

 principle as the plum or almond. The fossils never show any 

 indication of the presence of three carpels, either by three pores as 

 in the modern coco-nut or otherwise. To indicate their affinity with 

 the modern Nipa, Bowerbank founded the genus Nipadites and went 



