TERTIARY FLORA OF CHILE 105 



families or they may equally well represent something else. 

 Such material should generally be thrown away rather than 

 described unless it is likely to possess stratigraphic value 

 it certainly possesses no botanical value. 



Well preserved material from Coronel is identified by 

 Engelhardt as a species of Bennetia S. F. Gray. 18 Bennetia, 

 more properly Saussurea De Candolle, is a genus of herba- 

 ceous Composite with about 125 existing species, the vast 

 majority of which are confined to Alpine situations in the 

 Northern Hemisphere. So far as I know the genus does not 

 occur in South America, nor is it likely to occur fossil either 

 there or elsewhere. I regard the fossil as a slightly more 

 prominently toothed leaf of Thouinia philippii Engelhardt. 



Without taking the space to summarize the foregoing 

 enumeration it is obvious that this fossil flora is a consistent 

 unit, overwhelmingly American and subtropical in its facies, 

 totally lacking any discordant or exotic members. This alone 

 would serve to place it in the later rather than the earlier 

 half of the Tertiary. Although found on the present Chilean 

 coast it lacks any conclusive evidence that its original envi- 

 ronment was coastal it is certainly not a strand flora, but 

 of a subtropical rain forest assemblage. The number of 

 toothed leaves suggest upland but this is not borne out by 

 the intercalated marine beds, unless the leaves came from 

 the upland. The sediments are of a character, however, that 

 render such a supposition hardly probable. 



ENVIRONMENT INDICATED 



It would be a tedious repetition or rephrasing of what has 

 already been written in the section of this paper entitled 

 Analysis of the Fossil Flora to comment at length on the 

 most closely related existing forms, and the climate and 

 environment that they indicate. There are, however, certain 



18 Abh. Senck. Naturf. Gesell., Bd. 16, Hft. 4, p. 655, pi- 12, fig. 3, 

 1891. 



