80 TREE ANCESTORS 



altogether lacking kno\\Ti fossil representatives; Pterocarya, with 

 a few species in Trans Caucasia, China and Japan, represented in 

 the Tertiary in both Europe and North America; and Engelhardtia 

 (including Oreomunnea) which is now found in Asia from the Hima- 

 layas to Java and the Philippines, and in the mountains of Central 

 America on the opposite side of the world. Engelhardtia illus- 

 trates the extreme development of reduced fruits and enlarged 

 wings, and considerable of its geologic history is known. It appears 

 first in the earliest Tertiary along the shores of the then enlarged 

 Gulf of Mexico in Mississippi and Arkansas. Somewhat later 

 it is found on our Pacific coast and in Europe. A fossil winged 

 fruit from Mississippi is shown in the accompanying figure to illus- 

 trate its unlikeness to a walnut or hickory nut. These winged 

 fruits are something like those of the hornbeam (CarjDinus) of the 

 birch family, but the proportions and veining are different, as is 

 also the fruit itself, and the wings of the hornbeam are toothed and 

 not entire. 



Forestry experts warn us that the commercial hickory is growing 

 scarce, just as the black walnut is already scarce. Aside from 

 our enjo}mient of their nuts and the very practical ends which the 

 wood fulfills we should never forget the sentiment which attaches 

 to a family of such magnificent trees, a family with an ancestry, 

 as we have seen, extending back millions of years to a far off time 

 when the dominant animal population of the globe was the un- 

 couth reptiles of the Cretaceous, a time when the evolution of the 

 mammalia had not yet been wrought out, and when man was a 

 far distant promise, not even hinted at in the teeming life of that 

 age. 



Although we can never hope to bring back the primeval forests 

 of our ancestors, and it is probably best so, we can at least use the 

 intelhgence wliich the race has so slowly acquired through the ages 

 in conserving these magnificent tree relics of former times." 



