Jjilyi, 1880] 



NATURE 



201 



Cttnnins;hami. Although the branchlets are most abun- 

 dant in^ some of the beds, both marine and freshwater, 

 no trace whatever of the cones could be found. I was 

 at first surprised at this, for it is generally more common 

 in beds of marine origin, as at Bracklesham, Barton, 

 Sheppey, &c., to meet with cones than with foliage, 

 and no instance of the presence of coniferous foliage 

 only, in a sea-deposit of any age had previously come 

 under my notice. I was so puzzled that I spent several 

 days in digging and tracing out these branchlets and 

 vainly trying to find the attached fruits— the cause of 

 whose absence should have been clear. The cones, 3 

 inches long and nearly 9 inches in diameter, are so ex- 

 ceedingly dense and heavy that they have no po^ver of 

 flotation,' and their presence in beds of fine drifted sediment 

 could therefore only be due to some rare accident. On 

 the other hand, the small light cones of Sequoia would, 

 like those of Pinus, everywhere drift by flotation, and 

 necessarily not unfrequently become imbedded with the 

 foliage. Although I found no cones, the female terminal 

 buds present the peculiar constriction and then sweUing, 

 so characteristic of Araucaria. 



The distribution oi Araucaria Cuniiins.hami ■sX'&o\i.va&- 

 mouth is very clearly defined, and tells as plainly as 

 possible that its habits when existing in our latitudes did 

 not differ from those it now possesses. No trace of it is 

 met with west of the pier in the beds whose floras may be 

 thought, from their characters, to have come from districts 

 away from the sea — but east of the pier it abounds every- 

 where, in company with fan-palms, eucalyptus, aroids, 

 ferns, &c. , and in certain beds of mud and muddy sand 

 of the marine series, the branchlets, in marvellous preser- 

 vation, are seen to cross each other in every direction. 



The existing Araucaria Cunninghami forms vast forests 

 on the shores of ISIoreton Bay, on the alluvial banks of 

 the Brisbane River, and grows in the greatest profusion in 

 the brush forests of the Richmond River. "The trees 

 seem to thrive best near the coast, attaining in such a 

 situation their greatest height, often from 100 to 130 feet,i 

 but gradually diminishing in height the farther the trees 

 are inland. It would appear from this that the sea air 

 has a great effect upon it." 



The " brush " forests, in which A. Cunningliami very 

 generally occurs, although it is not exclusively confined to 

 them, are thus described by Moore : — 



" The ' brush ' is characterised by denseness of growth, 

 the altitude and beautiful dark green foliage of the trees, 

 the presence of lofty climbing plants, which extend their 

 slender pliant branches considerable distances, and by 

 this means often embracing, as it were, into one common 

 bond, many of the loftiest and largest trees. . . . Another 

 characteristic of forests of this description is a thick 

 undergrowth of numerous kinds of ferns and other plants. 

 Palms and tree-ferns also usually abound, the former 

 reaching a height, in some instances, of at least 130 feet. 

 . . . On the stems and branches of the trees numerous kinds 

 of epiphytal ferns and orchids grow, which, with the 

 other plants referred to, contribute materially to give such 

 forests a very tropical appearance." - 



It is clear, from the debris of trailing SmilaceK and 

 Aroids, and from the remains of large fan-palms and 

 ferns, that our Eocene "brush "-growth must have been 

 very similar to this in appearance. The physical aspects 

 of the former stations of Araucaria on the alluvial banks 

 of the great Bournemouth River in close proximity to the 

 sea, as we have ascertained, and its probable extension 

 along the shores of what must have been the cast coast 

 of the submerged continent seem to approximate to those 

 it now occupies on the Brisbane River and the shores of 

 Moreton Bay on the east coast of Australia. Nothing 



^ 150 feet. " Industrial Progress of New South Wales : Official Report 

 of the Sydney Exhibition, 1870," Part II. p. 643. It is astonishing how very 

 generally the dimensions of tlie Coniferae of Australia and America are 

 under estimated. 



= Loc. cit.. p. 633. 



can be more impressive indeed than the remarkable 

 agreement in habit, as far as we can trace, between the 

 Araucaria and associated plants that have passed away 

 and those that survive. The long-imbedded plants of 

 our Eocene coasts seem to have risen up and to live 

 again in this far-off country, and by what we see there 

 we are able to picture the long sandy coasts, beaten by 

 an ocean surf and fringed with dark-foliaged and gigantic 

 Araucarias, gum-trees, luxuriant palms and ferns, whose 

 remains have helped to form the present pine and heather- 

 clad cliffs of Bournemouth. If we contrast this with the 

 comparative absence of any associated vegetation in the 

 Mammoth Grove, we see how opposed the intended refer- 

 ence of these branches to Sequoia would have been to 

 any known natural grouping. 



Elsewhere in Great Britain we have little trace of 

 anything referable to Araucaria younger than in the 

 Jurassics, e.xcept certain foliage at Sheppey and the 

 foliage from the basalt of Antrim, referred by Bailey to 

 Sequoia as .S". du Xoyeri, about which however I am not 

 yet able to express an opinion. In France, from many 

 Eocene locahties, undoubted Araucaria branches have 

 been obtained, though none of them seem to be specifi- 

 cally identical with ours, and some appear more of the 

 A. excel sa type. 



In Central Europe, from Sotzka, Haring, Monte Pro- 

 mina, Bilin, &c., in Tertiary beds whose exact age is not 

 yet satisfactorily determined, a somewhat similar foliage 

 abounds. This was originally described as Araucarites, 

 and indeed at Haring a young cone with every character- 

 istic of Araucaria was found in the same bed with it.' 

 All of them were subsequently transferred to Sequoia, 

 which many certainly more nearly resemble in the direc- 

 tion and arrangement of the leaves ; yet the absence of 

 any Sequoia cones which can, so far as I know, be directly 

 connected with them, and the presence of a characteristic 

 Araucaria cone should, at all events, induce caution in 

 believing the whole of this type of foliage met with in 

 Central Europe during the Middle or Upper Eocene to 

 belong to an ally of Sequoia gigantea. It is quite open 

 to doubt whether, as Heer's determination of two frag- 

 ments would imply, this species known as .5'. sternbcrgeri, 

 whatever its real character may be, persisted as late as 

 the Miocene of Oeningen. On the other hand,_ the 

 presence of fossil Sequoia: of the Wellingtonia type within 

 the Arctic circle is undoubted, though Heer appears to 

 have made more species than were necessary. 



The presence of an Araucaria, indistinguishable from 

 A. Cunninghami, in our latitudes at a time not more remote 

 than the iSliddle Eocene, is of interest, for although 

 many of our Eocene plants have been referred^ to Aus- 

 tralian genera, there has always been doubt sufficient to 

 render any confirmation of the supposed land connection 

 with Australia'of importance. While the association with 

 it at Bournem'outh, of Podocarps and Dammara, Euca- 

 lyptus, and many ProteaceK, which are strictly forms of 

 the southern hemisphere, is but natural, the presence of 

 a needle-leaved conifer of the genus Pinus, even rare as 

 it is, is singular. Such a union nowhere takes place at 

 the present day, although in Mexico pines mingle with 

 feather palms. 



The presence in N. lat. 50' of a flora, now distinctive 

 of the sub-tropics of the southern hemisphere, and of a 

 north temperate flora in N. lat. 70', during the Eocene 

 period, can hardly fail to provoke wonder as to where 

 the equator of heat was then situated. It is impossible to 

 suppose that the equator of heat separated them as it does 

 now, however far north it might be driven by shutting 

 off the Arctic currents and leaving those of the Antarctic 

 to circulate. Yet if the southern hemisphere flora were 

 formerly to the north of the equatorial zone of heat, the 

 question must arise as to how Araucaria Cunninghami, 



'"Foss. Coniferx," Gocppert, Haarlem Tratisactions, iZ^o, pi. 44> P. 



