270 



PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



Fig. 113 



not met with now in northern latitudes. The recent 

 analogues of another genus, Nipa- 

 dites (fig. 112), the family of Nipa, 

 inhabit the Spice Islands and Japan, 

 and chiefly in low damp or marshy 

 tracts at the mouths of great rivers, 

 especially in brackish water. Asso- 

 ciated with these are some varieties 

 of the cucumber, or gourd tribe, the 

 pod of a variety of Acacia or Mi- 

 mosa (see fig. 113), the seeds of 

 cypress-like plants, and the fruits 

 of some coniferous trees. There are 

 also fragments of wood and stems 

 indicating the presence of a species of 

 the pepper plant, of several varieties 

 of palm-trees, and of several coni- 

 ferous trees. The wood has often 

 been pierced and almost destroyed 

 by an extinct species of teredo before 

 it was deposited in the bed where 

 it is now found ; and sometimes it 

 mosrrKS. j. tf ^ fa Collect i n 



(London Clay.) 



or the tubular cavities or these ani- 

 mals filled with carbonate of lime. 



The older tertiaries of the London Basin, of the 

 Hampshire and Isle of Wight Basins, of the Paris 

 Basin, and of the neighbourhood of Brussels, are all 

 contemporaneous deposits, and differ only in conse- 

 quence of local peculiarities caused by the nature of 

 the material. The oldest part of each, which is every- 

 where a coarse pebbly bed, may possibly have once 

 been spread pretty uniformly over the whole tract ; 



