152 BERRY— LOWER EOCENE FLORA OF [April 25, 



Since Ettingshausen's announcement a dozen or more fossil spe- 

 cies have been described. The oldest known European form occurs 

 in the lower Oligocene (Sannoisian) of France and the species be- 

 come increasingly abundant throughout southern Europe, especially 

 toward the close of the Oligocene and the dawn of the Miocene, 

 Saporta stating that the slabs from the leaf-beds at Armissan in south- 

 eastern France are thickly strewn with their peculiar fruits. Fossil 

 forms continue in Europe throughout the Miocene and Pliocene and 

 specimens of late Miocene or early Pliocene age are recorded from 

 Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, and Hungary. 



The Wilcox species are somewhat older than any of the known 

 European forms 



The existing Engelhardtias are upland forms and this may pos- 

 sibly have been their habitat in Wilcox times although their abun- 

 dance at different localities along the Wilcox coast would seem to 

 indicate that this was not the case. 



The genus Paraengelhardtia, which is a unique type confined to 

 a single locality in the W^ilcox, is clearly allied to Engelhardtia, as I 

 have shown in the systematic chapter. It seems probable that it 

 represents a survival of the ancestral stock from which Engelhardtia 

 was derived since its fruits are more primitive and indicate ancestral 

 forms with smaller bracts comparable with the bracts of Juglans or 

 Hicoria which in the course of time became accrescent and subse- 

 quently deeply trilobate. The primitive character oi Paraengelhardtia 

 and the presence of true Engelhardtias in the Wilcox so much earlier 

 than their first occurrence in Europe suggests that America was the 

 original home of the Engelhardtia stock, althovigh this supposition 

 cannot be verified or disproved until a Tertiary paleobotanical record 

 for the continent of Asia is available. 



The Myricales contains but two species of Myrica in the W^ilcox 

 flora. Myrica is a very old generic type with a large number of 

 fossil species ranging from the Middle Cretaceous to the present. 

 The existing species are relatively few in number and widely scat- 

 tered geographically and represent survivors from a Tertiary cosmo- 

 politan distribution. Myrica^^ is much less abundant in the Wilcox 



^2 The allied and monotypic genus Comptonta which by some students is 

 included in Myrica has an extended geologic history which has been discussed 

 by Berry, Amer. Nat., Vol. 40, 1906, pp. 485-520, pi. 1-4. 



