218 BERRY— LOWER EOCENE FLORA OF [April 25, 



Fourth, I have failed to follow the latest usage in recognizing the 

 genus Ocotea as such, since for obvious reasons it seems better to 

 recognize the genera Mespilodaphne and Oreodaphne of Nees rather 

 than to regard them as subgenera of Ocotea. The third subgenus of 

 Ocotea, — StrycJinodaphne, I have failed to recognize in the Eocene 

 flora of this area. 



The only apparent oddity in distribution shown by the Wilcox 

 Lauracese in comparison with recent floras of tropical America is the 

 abundance of Cinnamomum, and this simply adds confirmation to the 

 well-known fact of the cosmopolitanism of this genus in the early 

 Tertiary. Grisebach records only 28 species of Lauraceae in his 

 flora of the British West Indies. Alost of these are not coastal forms 

 although many have a wide range from lowlands to mountains. As 

 regards the Lauraceae those of the Wilcox, which number 30 different 

 forms, are more closely comparable with the more abundant modern 

 representation of this family in northern South America. This re- 

 ceives more or less confirmation from a study of the balance of the 

 Wilcox flora. It would seem from a consideration of all of the 

 facts that the early Eocene floras of the Mississippi embayment are 

 much more like those existing at the present time along the Caribbean 

 sea in Central America and northern South America than they are 

 like those of the West Indies. I do not mean by this that the Wil- 

 cox flora has not many points of resemblance to the lowland flora of 

 the West Indies and that of the Florida keys. They contain very 

 many common types, but with the following difference. The Missis- 

 sippi embayment Eocene floras represent a maximum northward ex- 

 tension of a flora like that which now inhabits northern South Amer- 

 ica. At the end of the Cligocene with the southward migration 

 of the temperate Miocene fauna as far as Florida, this flora retired 

 to the South American mainland and the present flora of the West 

 Indies, Florida keys, Bahamas and Bermuda represent a later north- 

 ward migration from that area, a migration in which some of the 

 W^ilcox types were left behind. 



The existing species of Cinnainojiiuii}'^^ number about fifty. They 

 are confined to the Oriental tropics except for their extension into 

 the warmer more humid part of the temperate zone in Japan, and 



■*! Staub, " Die Geschichte des genus Cinnamomum,"' Budapest, 1905. 



