I9M-] SOUTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA. 211 



hundred species of large leafed trees. The)- are divided into three 

 tribes named from the habit of the leaves the Digitatse, Lobatse and 

 Integrifolise. The first of these range from farther India to Aus- 

 tralia with only one or two American species. The second is most 

 abundant in the American tropics but is also found in Asia and 

 Africa and shows many parallelisms between the American and 

 Asiatic forms. It is most abundantly represented in the past history 

 of the genus. The third and largest modern tribe, the Integrifoliae, 

 has five or six American species and the balance are found in Asia 

 and Africa. 



The fossil forms (sometimes referred to SterculiphyUum) 

 number more than fifty species. Upwards of a score are known 

 from the Upper Cretaceous. These are mostly American and are 

 referable to the tribe Lobatse which may well have originated in the 

 western hemisphere. There is a species each in the Credneria 

 sandstone of Saxony and the Perucer beds of Bohemia (both Ceno- 

 manian) and a third in the Turonian of the latter country. The 

 balance are North American and include species in the Raritan for- 

 mation, the Cheyenne sandstone of southern Kansas, and in British 

 Columbia, a species in the Patoot beds of West Greenland and six 

 species in the Magothy formation of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and 

 eight species in the Dakota sandstone of the western interior. 

 There are less than a dozen Eocene species, the majority being con- 

 fined to the lower Eocene. Thus there are three species in the 

 Paleocene of France and another in the Ypresian of England as 

 well as one or two in the Denver and Raton formations of the Rocky 

 Mountain front range. The single large Wilcox species is entirely 

 typical and shows the usual variability in lobation and size. It 

 appears to be filiated with Sterculia Snozvii Lesquereux from the 

 American Upper Cretaceous, and may be exactly matched by several 

 existing species. There is a small leafed species in the middle 

 Eocene (Claiborne group) of the embayment which exactly matches 

 the typical Sterculia labrusca Unger from the European Tertiary and 

 the existing Sterculia diversifolia Don. It is closely parallelled by 

 two American Upper Cretaceous species — S. minima Berry and S. 

 mucronata Lesquereux. There are upward of ten Oligocene species 

 widely scattered over Europe and about 15 Miocene species, mostly 



