198 BERRY— LOWER EOCENE FLORA OF [April 25, 



The family is definitely represented in the Cretaceous by at least 

 five genera and is an important element in most Tertiary floras. 

 The oldest known genus is the form-genus Celastrophyllum proposed 

 by Goeppert. Five well-marked species occur in the Patapsco for- 

 mation (Albian) of Virigina and Maryland. At the base of the 

 Upper Cretaceous, particularly in North America, a large number 

 of species occur. Upward of thirty have been described of which 

 number two are recorded from New Zealand and two from the 

 Cenomanian of Niederschoena in Saxony. There is a species in the 

 Atane beds of Greenland and three in the Patoot beds. The re- 

 mainder occur in the United States and have the following distribu- 

 tion : ten in the Raritan formation of New Jersey and Maryland, 

 twelve in the Tuscaloosa formation of Alabama, two in the Magothy 

 formation of New Jersey and Maryland, two in the Middendorf 

 beds of South Carolina, seven in the Dakota sandstone, and two in 

 the Black Creek formation of North Carolina. There are ten Eocene 

 species — seven in the basal Eocene of Belgium, one in the Ypresian 

 of England and two in the Claiborne group of the Mississippi embay- 

 ment. There are five Miocene species in Italy, Bohemia and Styria ; 

 a Pliocene species in Italy ; and four Tertiary species from the 

 Island of Java. Another form-genus is Celastrinites Saporta which 

 has four species in the Paleocene of France, one in the Denver for- 

 mation of Colorado, another in the Livingston formation of Mon- 

 tana, and a seventh in the Miocene of Florissant, Colorado, 



The genus Celastrus Linne is the largest fossil genus of the 

 family and its history shows that while its present center of distribu- 

 tion is in the uplands of southeastern Asia and the East Indies the 

 ancestral stock was cosmopolitan and very abundant in the Tertiary 

 of America and Europe, with a strong probability that it originated 

 in the former area at the dawn of the Upper Cretaceous or some- 

 what earlier. The oldest known species, Celastrus arctica Heer, is 

 found in the Raritan and Magothy formations of New Jersey and 

 Maryland and in the Patoot beds of Greenland. No less than thirty 

 species of Celastrus have been described from the Eocene. These 

 include six Ypresian species from England, five species in the Wil- 

 cox flora, one in the Denver, ten in the Fort Union, one in the 

 Kenal of Alaska, three from Greenland and four from Australia. 



