SUMACH AND HOLLY 215 



rocks of Miocene age. Miocene hollys were especially abundant 

 in Europe. France alone had 1 1 different kinds. Most European 

 countries from Belgium to Greece had their Miocene hollys, in 

 all about 40 as compared with the single existing European species. 

 In the Miocene of Asia the holly has been found in Siberia, Man- 

 churia and Japan. In South America it was present in Colombia 

 on the north and in southern Chile on the south. In North 

 America, although there are few Miocene plant beds, hollys have 

 been discovered in Maryland, Colorado and CaHfomia, In 

 the often mentioned lake beds at Florissant in the Colorado Rock- 

 ies, the remains of seven different hollys have been found. 



In the closing days of the Tertiary, or Pliocene times, the num- 

 ber of species of holly shrank to 12, of which 5 were survivors from 

 the Miocene, but as we know practically nothing of the Pliocene 

 hollys that lived at that time in most of North America and Asia, 

 or in tropical lands, this shrinkage was probably more apparent 

 than real. PKocene hollys are known in Europe from Spain, France, 

 Italy and Germany. In Asia there were two in Asia Minor and one 

 in Japan. In North America 2 PUocene hollys are known and 

 both of these were discovered in New Jersey. 



Following the PHocene came the glaciation of the Pleistocene. 

 That its influence on the forests was real and not imaginary is 

 shown by the fact that only a single holly has survived in Europe 

 and this one was already present in the Pliocene of France, and it 

 occurs also in interglacial beds in north Germany. There was a 

 Pleistocene holly, now extinct, on the island of Madeira. All of 

 the other known Pleistocene hollys were North American, although 

 this fact is merely a reflection of the imperfection of the Pleistocene 

 record and our ignorance of it in most parts of the world. These 

 American hollys include undetermined species found in Kentucky: 

 the remains of our Christmas holly, Ilex opaca, in the river terraces 

 of Maryland, North Carolina and Alabama: the fruits of the ink 

 or gall-berry, Ilex glabra, in the celebrated fossiliferous deposits 

 at Vero, Florida, associated with human and other vertebrate 

 remains: the so-called black-alder, Ilex verticillata, associated with 

 marine shells of cold water marine animals in the so-called Leda 

 clays of Maine: and the leaves of the dahoon. Ilex cassine in Virginia. 



