SASSAFRAS, SPICE-BUSH AND BAY 251 



York to Alabama. In Europe they are known from Bohemia and 

 Mora\ia, and they have been even recorded, but on somewhat 

 doubtful authority, from Argentina. At no later time are they as 

 varied as during the Upper Cretaceous. 



During the Eocene 4 or 5 different forms of sassafras are knoAMi 

 from widely scattered localities which include France, Germany, 

 Greenland and British Columbia. In succeeding Oligocene time 

 but 2 species are known and these are both from European localities, 

 in fact the only items of record in the later geological history of the 

 sassafras come from the records in the European rocks. As I 

 have explained in connection with several other of our trees, this 

 is largely due to the paucity of later Tertiary plant records in 

 North America, especially in those regions where the sassafras 

 existed during those times. 



The Miocene records are of 6 or 7 species found in Spain, France. 

 Italy, Baden, Styria and Bohemia. During the succeeding Plio- 

 cene times one of the Miocene species sur\ived in Europe, and I 

 have pictured several leaves of this form in order to emphasize how 

 like the modern sassafras leaves they were, and the further fact 

 of the many modern North American and Asian types that lived 

 in Europe during the Pliocene and until the coming of the Pleisto- 

 cene glaciers. In fact a sassafras leaf has been found in France 

 as late as the deposits of the third Interglacial stage of the Pleisto- 

 cene, showing that it survived three Glacial periods on that con- 

 tinent and only succumbed filially during the fourth or final glacia- 

 tion that came to a close only a few thousand years ago and after 

 the men of the Old Stone Age had already been a long time in 

 western Europe. 



THE SPICE-BUSH 



The spice-bush, or benjamin-bush as it is sometimes called should 

 be familiar to all those who tramp the spring woods. Its clusters 

 of fragrant bright yellow flowers borne close to the stems as in so 

 many tropical trees and shrubs makes it a conspicuous object in 

 the bare woods of early spring for it blooms long before its leaves 

 come out, as early as March in our northern States and still earlier 



