170 TREE ANCESTORS 



but occurred also in France and Russia. As I have had occasion 

 to state so many times in these sketches of tree ancestors our 

 American plant records are especially deficient for the Oligocene 

 and Pliocene so that the fact that I am unable to enumerate any 

 Ohgocene magnoUas from North America does not mean that 

 none existed for we are quite sure that they did, it simply means 

 that the book of history whose pages are the rocks has the Ohgo- 

 cene chapter torn out of the American record. 



Sixteen Miocene species of Magnolia have been recorded. These 

 records include both Europe and North America, and the magnolias 

 were about as abundant then as now although their range had not 

 yet become as restricted as it is today. Miocene Asia probably 

 had its magnolias as in modern times, but whereas magnohas 

 were abundant in Miocene Europe none of these survived the 

 Pleistocene glaciation. 



The closing days of the Tertiary period, or Pliocene times, have 

 furnished 11 magnolias, found in North America, Europe, and 

 eastern Asia (Japan) . In North America these Pliocene magnolias 

 occurred in what is now the Atlantic Coastal Plain — the Pacific 

 coastal region and western interior regions being at that time 

 much as they are in modem times, both geographically and climati- 

 cally. In Europe most of the PHocene records are from countries 

 bordering the Mediterranean, that is, Spain, France, and Italy, 

 but magnolias were still present in the late PHocene in both Holland 

 and Germany. These last were apparently exterminated by the 

 Pleistocene glaciation, thus leaving Europe without any native 

 magnolias in the modern period. Two forms of Magnolia were 

 described many years ago from the Tertiary of Australia, but 

 these are not regarded as authentic representatives, and have been 

 entirely ignored in {he present discussion. 



Pleistocene magnolias are restricted to the remains of the exist- 

 ing sweet bay, Magnolia virginiana, found in deposits of that age 

 in southern Florida. The accompanying sketch map shows the 

 localities from which fossil magnohas have been described and 

 shows how much more extensive was their range in the past as 

 compared with what it is today. 



