108 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.54. 



Myrica has about 35 existing species and is widely distributed in 

 the warmer parts of both hemispheres. Although we commonly 

 think of Myrica as a temperate type, the bulk of the existing species 

 are decidedly warm temperate and upland tropica^ types. The 

 subgenus Morella comprises nearly all the existing species, and its 

 area of distribution includes southeastern Asia from Japan and China 

 through the East Indies. In Africa it extends from Abyssinia to 

 Madagascar and the Cape throughout the eastern watershed. In 

 Europe a single species extends from southern Portugal to the Azores 

 and Canaries. In America one species {carolinensis) reaches north- 

 ward to Nova vScotia; another (cerifera) extends northward to Mary- 

 land; and two species on the Pacific coast extend the range north- 

 ward to Oregon. The balance of the species occur throughout the 

 Antilles, Central America, and northwestern South America. Only 

 one species, usually considered as a subgenus, is cold temperate in its 

 distribution. The latter, Myrica gale, ranges from Kamchatka to 

 Lappland, Britain, and western France in the Paiarctic region, and 

 from Newfoundland to southern Alaska in the Nearctic region, where 

 it extends southward to Virginia. Thus eastern North America is 

 the only region where there is any considerable overlapping of the 

 two subgenera. These features are brought out on the accompanying 

 sketch map, and the conclusion is reached that Myrica gale is a late 

 Tertiary or Pleistocene Holarctic radiation from what was a dis- 

 tinctly warm temperate group of species, and this conclusion is more 

 or less corroborated by the geological history of the genus— the bulk 

 of the fossil species representing the Morella section of the genus, or 

 the allied genus Comptonia, which is sometimes made a third sub- 

 genus of Myrica, and which has but a single existing species oJ 

 eastern North America, although cosmopolitan in the Tertiary. 

 Myrica is not uncommon in the warm temperate and subtropical 

 Tertiary coastal floras of southeastern North America. 



There are several shrubby species of Myrica in the Inter-Andean 

 region of Central Peru {Myrica variihractea De Candolle, M. weher- 

 haueri De Candolle) v/hich range upward to 3,000 meters. Whether 

 these extend southward as far as the Potosi region I do not know, 

 but Myrica xalayensis is found in eastern Bolivia in the Santa Cruz 

 region, and is doubtless more wide ranging than the meager records 

 indicate. 



The fossil ferns are too few and incomplete to merit any special 

 comment. The grasses are represented by three types, and the 

 presence of flowering scales of a species of Festuca is notable, since 

 the known fossil grasses usually comprise stem or leaf fragments. 

 The fragment of a pahn, while too incomplete to arouse botanical 

 interest, is important ecologically and serves to establish the presence 

 of this essentially tropical type in the flora. Genera not otherwise 



