period for cycads. Professor Nordenskiold brought home 

 no less than eight species from the Lower Cretaceous 

 beds of Greenland, lat. 70, N. The monocotyledonous 

 Palm family, which is met with in the carboniferous 

 beds, like the cycads, dwindled down at this time to 

 three species ; but afterwards recovered itself so 

 marvellously that the eocenes can claim twenty-nine, 

 and the miocenes thirty-one species, while the cycads 

 disappeared entirely. I say this with some reserve, as 

 Le Comte de Saporta states that Professor Heer 

 has found a cycad in the middle tertiaries of Switzer- 

 land ; * but on referring to the Professor's valuable 

 work, " The Primeval World of Switzerland" the 

 translation of which was published under his direc- 

 tion, last year, I find the following : f Cycadese, 

 formerly so numerous, of the Gymnospermous sub- 

 class, are represented only by two species; and of 

 these the fragments of stems and remains of leaves, 

 that have come down to our times are so imperfect 

 that their determination cannot be regarded as cer- 

 tain." Again, a fossil cycad is reported to have been 

 found very recently in a miocene deposit at Koumi, in 

 the Negropont. The specimen consists of a frond, 

 each foliole of which measures about four inches ; its 

 characters agree with that of Encephalartos, a living 

 African family, which, if so, we are led to the conclu- 

 sion that while several families of cycads of the 

 secondary age have entirely disappeared in Europe, 



* Paleontologie Frai^aise, 2nd ser., voL.ii., p. 4. 

 f Vol. i., p. 323. 



