36 THE RARITAN FLORA. 



world-wide in their distribution, and they maintained their po- 

 sition with unabated vigor during most of the Lower Cretaceous. 

 During the Upper Cretaceous, however, they commenced to 

 wane, a prophetic hint of their minor position and restricted 

 range in the floras of the modern world, where they have only 9 

 genera and less than 100 species. Two of the G}Tnnospermce, a 

 Baicra and a Ccekanozcskia, are referred to the Ginkgoales, that 

 singular order whose sole surviving representative is the Maiden- 

 hair tree indigenous in eastern Asia, and commonly cultivated 

 as an ornamental tree in our parks. This order was a very im- 

 portant element in the older Mesozoic, and its two representatives 

 in the Raritan are to be regarded as surviving elements from the 

 Jurassic. They are both confined to the lower Raritan. This 

 leaves 16 species of the order Coniferales, or true conifers, 

 the order to which all of the gymnosperms in the recent flora of 

 New Jersey belong. The family Taxacese, which is well repre- 

 sented in the older Potomac formations of Maryland and Vir- 

 ginia, has but one species in the Raritan, Protophyllodadus 

 subintcgrifoluis (Lesq.) Berry, of the sub-family Taxse. Its 

 botanical affinity is not established with certainty, although su- 

 perficially it is strikingly like the modern antipodean genus 

 Phyilocladus. The balance of the Coniferales are referred to 

 the familv Pinaceae, 4 sub-families being represented. The 

 sub-familv Abietese includes a species of Pinus, which is first 

 seen in the Upper Raritan at South Amboy and which persists 

 into the Magothy formation and is also present in the Upper 

 Cretaceous deposits in the Carolinas. Other species are also 

 present in the Magothy formation along with fossil wood, and 

 it is to this genus that the abundant amber of that formation is 

 said to owe its origin. The sub- family Araucariese, at the 

 present day confined to the southern hemisphere, but cosmopoli- 

 tan in the older Mesozoic, is represented by 2 Raritan species, 

 Dmnmara horealis Heer, based on deciduous cone scales, and 

 BrachyphyUnni macrocarpum Newb., based on leafy twigs. The 

 latter is known only from the L^pper Raritan, but, nevertheless, 

 represents a Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous type, of which it is 

 about the last representative. 



