10 



trees to take place within 12 of the pole. All the Arctic 

 Miocene plants agree entirely with those of the Miocene 

 beds of Central Europe. But this even is not all. Many of 

 the genera found in the Miocene flora go further back still. 

 They meet us in the chalk, the earliest flora of Dicotyledons. 

 Dr. Lesquereux gives, in the Cretaceous Flora of the Western 

 Territories (vol. vi. of U. S. Geological Survey, 1874), amongst 

 others the following genera of trees as then existing : the 

 alder, the birch, the oak, the laurel, the magnolia, the plane- 

 tree, the willow, the sassafras, the sequoia, the tulip-tree. 

 With pardonable pride the eminent American palseo-botanist 

 remarks upon the great antiquity of the indigenous glories of 

 the American woods, the magnolia and the tulip-tree. He 

 justly remarks, " The magnolia, and its relative, the tulip- 

 tree, are wonders of American nature quite as worthy admira- 

 tion as the great Niagara or the mammoth trees of California" 

 (Tertiary Flora, vol. vii., p. 247). But after describing frag- 

 ments of tulip-tree leaves from the cretaceous beds he makes 

 the following most valuable remarks (Cretaceous Flora, vol. vi., 

 p. 124) : " Liriodendron, the tulip-tree, has in its characters, 

 its distribution, and its life a great degree of affinity with 

 magnolia. The American species is the only one known now 

 in the vegetable world, and its habitat is strictly limited to 

 this country. It does not ascend higher than the fortieth 

 degree of latitude, except, perhaps, casually, like magnolia, 

 under the protection of favourable local circumstances. The 

 genus does not appear to have any disposition to modifications 

 of its type, and to migrations. We have as yet scarcely any 

 fossil remains of it in our Tertiary formations. In that of 

 Europe, it is represented from Greenland to Italy by one species 

 only. The leaves of different forms, described from the Dakota 

 group as four species, may perhaps be referable to a single one, 

 as the characters, especially the size, of the leaves may be local, 

 and result from climatic circumstances. It has thus passed 

 a solitary life. Even now, by the singular and exclusive form 

 of its pale-green glossy leaves (i.e., four-lobed and looking as if 

 the fifth apical lobe had been cut off, apparently a unique out- 

 line) ; by its large cup-shaped yellow flowers, from which it has 

 received its specific name ; by its smooth, exactly cylindrical 

 stem, gracefully bearing an oblong pyramidal head of branches, 

 grouped with perfect symmetry, it stands widely apart from 

 the other denizens of our forests as a beautiful stranger, or 

 rather as a memorial monument of another vegetable world. 

 Either considered in its whole or in its separate characters, the 

 tulip -tree is a universal and constant subject of admiration and 

 wonder. It could be named, not the king, it is not strong 



