272 PALAEONTOLOGY : FOSSIL ORGANIC REMAINS. 



palms (Corypha dulcis 328 ), covered with parrots of many- 

 coloured plumage. South America has oaks, but not a 

 single species of pine ; and the first of these familiar forms 

 of my native land which presented itself to my sight, was 

 thus in strange association with a fan palm. Columbus, in 

 his first voyage of discovery, saw Coniferse and palms grow- 

 ing together on the north-eastern point of the Island of 

 Cuba, ( 329 ) and consequently within the tropics and nearly at 

 the level of the sea. That wonderful man, whom nothing 

 escaped, notices this fact in his journal as remarkable ; and 

 his friend Anghiera, the secretary of Ferdinand the Catholic, 

 recounts with astonishment, that " in the newly discovered 

 lands palmeta and pineta are found together/' The com- 

 parison of the present distribution of plants over the surface 

 of the earth, with that disclosed by fossil floras, is of great 

 geological interest. The southern temperate zone, accord- 

 ing to Darwin's beautiful and animated description ( 33 ) of 

 its ocean-covered surface, its numerous islands, and its 

 wonderful intermixture of tropical forms of vegetation with 

 those of colder regions, offers us the most instructive ex- 

 amples for the study of the past and present geography of 

 plants. The past is undoubtedly an important portion of 

 the history of the vegetable kingdom. 



Cycadese, which, from the number of their fossil species, 

 must have occupied a far more important place in the 

 ancient than in the present vegetable world, accompany 

 their allies the coniferse from the coal formation upwards, 

 but are almost entirely wanting in the variegated sandstone, 

 which contains the remains of a luxuriant growth of certain 

 coniferse of peculiar form, Yoltzia, Haidingera, and Albertia. 

 The cycadese attain a maximum in the keupe* jnd the lias, 

 which contain twelve different species. In the cretaceous 



