Pandanacece (screw pine), Aralias, &c., were pushed 

 south towards the equator. About this period 

 the Palm appeared for the first time ; fossil trunks 

 of trees, with supposed leaf-scars (one of the 

 characteristics of the family) from the carboniferous 

 beds, were at one time thought to be palms, but now 

 ascertained to be cryptogams. The two principal 

 true palms of this period are Flabellariachamceropifolia> 

 Goepp., represented by a fan-shape leaf resembling 

 Chamcerops, and consequently allied to the dwarf 

 palmettos, and a palm from a fresh-lake deposit in 

 Austria, and from Provence ; the leaf of which is large, 

 with disunited segments, or only divided towards its 

 edges ; it resembles Phoenicophorium Sechellarum^ 

 WendL, which holds amiddle place between the fan-shape 

 and the pinnate-leaved forms, such as the sabal and 

 the date. The cretaceous beds of North America 

 contain a large assemblage of dicotyledonous trees 

 with conifers and cycads. Professor Nordenskiold 

 (now an ice-bound prisoner with a Swedish scientific 

 expedition in the Vega, near Behring Straits, having 

 been overtaken by winter, probably in October, 

 when on the point of conpleting the North- West 

 passage), found in the peninsular of JNoarsoak, Green- 

 land, a Zingileracea, a bamboo, Arundo Grcenlandica^ 

 Heer., and a cycad, Cycadites DicJcsoni, Heer., per- 

 haps, the last of the family which grew within the 

 polar circle, and several ferns belonging to the tropical 

 order of Gleicheniacece, also Palmacece, Pandanacece 

 and Drac&noe ; the dicotyledons comprise coriaceous.- 



