290 Count Gaston de Saporta on the Part 'played 



given in the same Number of the ' Annals ') may be characteristic 

 of certain orders. If we confine the word raphides to the 

 needle-like crystals commonly occurring in bundles, it may be 

 the expression of a more universal diagnosis between such orders 

 as Onagracese and their next allies, and yet not less simple and 

 sure, than any single character hitherto employed. Thus, too, 

 we could determine the affinities and contrasts of certain plants 

 by a method at once easy, novel, and practical, and all this in 

 the absence of those parts heretofore exclusively used for the 

 descriptive distinctions. And there would be another advantage 

 in enlisting these crystals into the service of systematic botany ; 

 for we should not be thus employing merely an empirical formula, 

 but methodically recognizing some really fundamental results of 

 plant-life, well fitted to keep before us such interesting and 

 important phenomena in the economy of vegetation as must be 

 especially valuable in a natural system of classification. 



Still these observations are only ofi'ered suggestively, and not 

 dogmatically, in the hope of exciting such further research as 

 may yet be required either to extend, confine, or correct them, 

 — since I have had so little opportunity of examining numerous 

 species, that it is desirable that other botanists who may be 

 more favourably situated will continue the inquiry, especially as 

 regards exotic plants. 



Edenbridge, August !/» 1863. 



XXIX. — On the Part played hy Deciduous Plants in the Tertiary 

 Floras previous to the Miocene properly so called, and especially 

 in that of the Gypsum of Aix. By the Count Gaston de 

 Saporta*. 



The part played by deciduous plants, congeneric with those of 

 Europe in the present day, in the Tertiaxy floras of a far-distant 

 age is one of the most singular questions raised by the still 

 modern study of the fossil plants of this period. The very ex- 

 istence of these plants, or, rather, the contrast resulting from 

 their association with perfectly tropical forms, constitutes of it- 

 self a very remarkable phenomenon. We should in vain attempt 

 to explain it by a cause analogous to those which are still in 

 action. It is true that the supposition of an alpine region situated 

 in the vicinity of the ancient deposits, sufficiently elevated and cold 

 to cause the presence of these species, presents itself immediately 

 to the mind as a natural hypothesis ', and yet, when we consider 

 that it is not only upon an isolated point, but constantly and in 



* Translated from the Bibliotheque Universelle, March 1863, p. 186j by 

 W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. 



