176 Royal Society. 
found except at the last place, where astem of Sequoia Couttsie was 
met with, thus showing that the deposit is identical with that at 
. Bovey Heathfield. 
“The Fossil Flora of Bovey Tracey.’ By Dr. Oswaid Heer, 
Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanical Gardens in Ziirich. 
The surface-covering of the Bovey plateau consists of a light- 
coloured quartzose sand, which contains here and there considerable 
beds of white clay. By the plants contained in it this formation is 
assigned to the Diluvium. 
Immediately under it come the beds of clay and lignite, which 
belong to one formation, far older than that of the overlying white 
clay; the plants found in them determine them as belonging unques- 
tionably to the miocene period. Hence the formations must be 
treated of separately. 
A. The Miocene Formation of Bovey. 
Of the forty-nine species of plants hitherto discovered in the 
lignite beds of Bovey, twenty occur on the Continent in the miocene 
formation. Those beds are therefore undoubtedly miocene. When 
tabulated, it is seen that fourteen of the twenty species occur in the 
Tongrien étage, thirteen in the Mayencien, five in the Helvétien, and 
eight in the C£ningien; hence the Bovey lignites must be ranged in 
the under miocene, and in the Aquitanien étage of it. 
~ Moreover, the new species at Bovey are closely allied to well-known 
Continental forms on this horizon. | 
It is remarkable that Bovey has no species in common with Ice- 
land, although the tertiary flora of the latter belongs to the same 
period, and two of its species have been found in the miocene de- 
posit of Ardtun Head in Mull. The Bovey flora has a much more 
southern character, manifesting, indeed, a subtropical climate. 
It has certainly some points of connexion with the eocene of the 
Isle of Wight, but on the whole possesses an essentially different 
character. The fact that but one species is common to it and Alum 
Bay, whilst it has so many in common with the more remote miocene 
formations of the Continent, satisfies us that it belongs to a different 
horizon. 
Among the twenty-six new species found at Bovey, several inter- 
esting forms are found. The first place belongs to Sequoia Couttsia, 
a conifer which we can illustrate by branches of every age, by cones 
and seeds. It supplies a highly impértant link between Sequoia 
Langsdorfii and S. Sternbergi, the wilely distributed representatives 
of S. sempervirens and 8. gigantea ( Wellingtonia), whose occurrence 
in the present creation is confined to California. 
Of great interest also are two species of Vitis, of which the grape- 
stones lie in the clays of Bovey. Three remarkable species of Fig, 
the seeds of three new species of Nyssa and two of Annona, one new 
water-lily (Nymphea), and many highly ornate Carpolithes impart 
to our knowledge of tertiary plants a most essential extension. 
-- It is highly probable that, at the period of the lower miocene, the 
