380 VEGETABLES IN THE TERTIARY EORMATIONS. 



Wc have as yet discovered no remains of the leaves, or 

 trunk of Pandanese in a fossil state, but the presence of our 

 unique fruit in the Inferior Oolite formation near Charmouth, 

 carries us back to a point of time, when "we knovs^ from 

 other evidence that England was in the state of new-born 

 land, emerging from the seas of a tepid climate; and shows 

 that combinations of vegetable structure such as exist in 

 the modern Pandaneas, adapted in a peculiar manner to the 

 office of vegetable colonization, prevailed also at the time 

 when the Oohte rocks were in process of formation. 



This fruit also adds a new link to the chain of evidence 

 which makes known to us the Flora of the Secondary 

 periods of geology, and therein discloses fresh proofs of 

 Order, and Harmony, and of Adaptation of peculiar means 

 to peculiar ends; extending backwards from the actual 

 condition of our Planet through the manifold stages of 

 change, which its ancient surface has undergone.* 



SECTION IV. 



VEGETABLES IN STRATA OF THE TERTIARY SERIES.f 



It has been stated that the vegetation of the Tertiary 

 period presents the general character of that of our exist- 

 ing Continents within the Temperate Zone. In Strata of 

 this Series, Dicotyledonous Plants assume nearly the same 

 proportions as at present, and are four or five times more 

 numerous than the Monocotyledonous ; and the greater 

 number of fossil Plants, although of extinct species, have 

 much resemblance to living Genera. 



* Fruits of another genus of PandancsB, to which Mr. Ad. Brongniart has 

 given the name of Pandanocarpum, (Prodrome, p. 138,) occur together with 

 fruits of Cocoa-nut, at an early period of the Tertiary formations, among the 

 numerous fossil fruits that are fouad in the London clay of the Isle of Shep- 



pcy. 



t See PI. 1, Figs. G6 to 72. 



