J. Starkie Gardner — Fossil Flowering Plants. 497 



The oldest Monocotyledons thus appear to be referable to the 

 Pandaneas, a group of plants distributed in widely distant and 

 remote oceanic islands, whose fruits are still met with at sea in drifts 

 of vegetable matter. 



Next to these in antiquity are two very monocotyledonous-looking 

 fragments from the Jurassic of Yorkshire, which have been fully 

 described in the Geological Magazine for May and August. The 

 one is apparently an unopened palm-like spathe, and the other a 

 jointed cane-like stem. Mr. Brodie possesses an undoubtedly mono- 

 cotyledonous leaf fragment from the Purbeck of Swindon. 



The AroidecB have long been supposed to be a group of very high 

 antiquity, but there are good reasons for believing that the supposed 

 remains of aroideous plants from beneath the Tertiaries are, without 

 exception, referable to other groups, and actually there are no known 

 traces of them earlier than the Middle Eocene, when they become by 

 no means uncommon. 



In a similar manner the fruits once supposed to represent palms 

 in the Paleeozoic and Mesozoic rocks have been gradually removed 

 or suppressed, and, unless the fragments of palm-like wood in the 

 Gault at Folkestone are taken into account, there are no traces of palms 

 in any of our Secondary strata. They, however, appear as low down 

 in our Eocene as the Woolwich series. 



We are not able to speak with certainty regarding the supposed 

 liliaceous or Dr a ccena -like stems from the Wealden, so frequently 

 mentioned by Mantell, since it is not easy now to identify the par- 

 ticular specimens referred to by him ; but it is very probable that 

 certain stems of Endogenites in the British Museum are those intended, 

 in which case they are, of course, cycadeous. The Wealden has, 

 indeed, so far yielded no trace whatever of any more highly organized 

 plants than ferns and Gymnosperms, and this, when we consider 

 that Monocotyledons were undoubtedly in existence, is a fact that 

 should be of great significance to speculative geologists. The sedi- 

 ments must represent the deposits of the drainage system of a large 

 area, for they are of vast extent and thickness, varied in character, 

 and abounding in remains of trunks and stems, fruits and foliage of 

 plants. In them, therefore, if anywhere, we might reasonably expect 

 to find at least the traces of reed and rush, but the swamps seem to 

 have been tenanted only by Equisetum and ferns, and the forests by 

 Cycads and Conifers. 



The same absence of Angiosperms, so far as British rocks are con- 

 cerned, is continuous throughout the Neocomian and Gault, and it is 

 only in the White Chalk that we meet with any indications of them, 

 and these only take the form of a more than suspicious impression 

 of a net- veined leaf, in the Jermyn Street Museum, and of some 

 structureless bodies which were apparently some kind of fruit. 



When, however, we turn to the gymnosperraous section of Phane- 

 rogams, the records are very different. To refer here to the earlier 

 Secondary Coniferoe and Cycadeoe would be quite beyond our pro- 

 vince, and it is only those of the Cretaceous, as the last discoverable 

 ancestors in our area of the Eocene flora, that are of immediate 



DECADE III. VOL. III. NO. XI. 32 



