RARE TREES IX ABBOTSBURY CASTLE GARDENS. 18? 



Africa, flourished in the Oligocene beds of the South of France, but 

 is now lost. The Canaries is its most northern limit. The remains of 

 Dicotyledons comprise Alder, Birch, Cupuliferae (Hazel, Hornheam, 

 Beech, Chestnut, Oak), Salicacere (Willow, Pojjlar), V\mcicess(Blm, 

 Plane), Fig, Laurel, Maple, Araliacete (Aralia, Ivy), Mijrtle, Box, 

 Water-Lily, Judas-tree, Caruh-tree, Oleacese (Olive, Ash), Catalpa, 

 Viburnum, &c. 



Salisburia sijn Gingko. 

 The Taxinese, whose seeds are not collected round the axis of a 

 cone, made their appearance before the true conifers. There are 

 six families belonging to the Order, of which Salisburia is one. 

 Its leaves are coriaceous, fan-shaped, and deciduous. It differs so 

 much in habit and foliage from all other conifers that in the absence 

 of flowers and seeds it would be almost impossible to assign its 

 proper place in the Vegetable Kingdom. The male-flowers are on 

 slender axillary catkins, the female are fascicled and pedunculate, 

 The trunk lacks the regularity of the Pine or the Araucaria ; it is 

 less upright, the branches divaricate, spreading, not verticillate. 

 but irregular upon the axis. Passing over Gingkophijllum 

 flabellatum. Sap. from the English Coal measures and G. Grassata, 

 Sap. from the Permian as doubtful progenitors of Salisburia 

 adiantifolia, undoubted forms of the genus appeared for the first 

 time in the Permian age, followed by G. primigenia, Heer. and 

 G. antarctica, Sap. in the Rhoctic and twelve species in tlie Oolites 

 of Great Britain, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Southern Russia, Amour, 

 and Japan. The Spitzbergen-beds contain a flora similar to 

 that of Scarborough, Gingko has been met with in both. The 

 Wealden yields one species, the Lower Cretaceous Beds of the 

 Polar regions and Northern Germany yield at least four, of 

 which G. tenuistriata occurs in the Lower Cireensand of the 

 two widely-separated districts of Greenland and Portugal. The 

 Eocene Gingko eocenica and the ^fiocene G. adiantoides of 

 Greenland and Italy come very near to Salishuriu' adiantifolia. 

 Mr. Starkie Gardner found seeds in the London Clay of Shopj-y, 

 which he considers to be those of G. eocenica and identifies 



