562 Eevieivs — Berry's Floras of South Carolina. 



IX. — The Upper Cretaceotjs and Eocene Floras of South Carolina 

 AND Georgia. By E. W. Berry. United States Geological 

 Survey, Professional Paper 84, pp. 200, pis. xxix, 1914. 



rpHE most extensive of the new floras here described is that found 

 J^ in Turonian beds of South Carolina, over seventy species being 

 recognized. JN^early a fifth of these are conifers, and about two-thirds 

 dicotyledons. The facies may be compared with that of the Green- 

 land Cretaceous flora, but there are several cosmopolitan types, and, 

 as in many related floras, there is a mingling of forms such as the 

 willow and walnut with others like the fig. Eucalyptus and Araucaria 

 which are now climatically separated. The vegetation probably 

 resembled most nearly the ' temperate rain-forests ' of to-day, such 

 as those of Southern Japan and New Zealand. 



Since the upper Cretaceous deposits of Georgia are marine the 

 plant fossils are fewer than in Carolina, only the most resistant 

 leaves being preserved. Hence speculations on the character of the 

 flora are of little value, but the author thinks that a mild damp 

 climate prevailed. 



Some useful maps are given of the past and present distribution of 

 Cinnatnomum, Eucalyptus, and other forms, showing clearly how 

 cosmopolitan Cretaceous types have now become restricted and 

 isolated. 



Turning to the middle Eocene plants of Georgia, of which every 

 species is described as new, we find a tropical littoral habitat 

 indicated by several genera which the author has definitely 

 recognized, including a mangrove {Ehizophora), which does not 

 now extend so far north. 



Many of the figures leave much to be desired, and often represent 

 very fragmentary specimens, even in the case of some of the numerous 

 new species. Regarding the family and generic identification of these 

 leaves, the author himself admits that there is sometimes an element 

 of doubt, aijd in one extreme case a new species [Momisia americana), 

 referred to a genus which "has not previously been recorded in a 

 fossil state ", is described from a single incomplete leaf, which, more- 

 over, closely resembles the common genus Cinnamomum. 

 . The great difficulties met with in studying fossil angiosperms 

 perhaps accounts for their neglect in England, on which the author 

 comments as follows : — 



" The splendid series of plant-bearing horizons of the south of 

 England have, with the exception of sporadic descriptions of certain 

 local florules by De la Harpe, Heer, Ettingshausen, and others, and 

 the work of J. Starkie Gardner on the ferns and conifers, remained 

 unknown down to the present. It seems remarkable that only two 

 Englishmen, Bowerbank and Gardner, have devoted any considerable 

 attention to these floras, and the latter failed to complete his work, so 

 that in many ways the most interesting part of the British Eocene 

 flora, certainly the most useful for purposes of correlation, remains 

 unknown to science except for various antiquated and scattered 

 references." 



