154 Carruthers — British Fossil Pandanece. 



although described originally by him under the name Palceohromelia 

 have been found in the Tertiary deposits of Austria (Sitzungsber. 

 d. Math.-Nat. classe der K. Akad. der Wissen. Vienna, vol. viii. 

 p. 492). He considers that he has fragments representing five 

 species, which he refers to the genus Pandanus. 



In England the discovery of fruits has supplied more satisfactory 

 evidence of the former existence of the PandanecB} The first known 

 specimens of a Pandanaceous fruit were figured and described by 

 Prof. Lindley in the second volume of his Fossil Flora (1835), plate 

 129, under the name of Strohilites Bucklandi. Lindley, with great 

 success, educes from his imperfect materials characters which would 

 have led him to place the fossils in Pandaneos, had he been obliged 

 to give them a positive position, but he preferred referring them to 

 the provisional genus Strohilites, until additional specimens should 

 supply the materials for a more satisfactory determination. Lindley 

 mentions neither the locality nor the age of these fossils, but only 

 that they belonged to Miss Bennet, whose collections, I believe, 

 are now in America. Professor Morris, in his Catalogue of British 

 Fossils, says they were found in the Upper Greensand of Wiltshire. 



In 1836 Buckland figured and described a fruit to which, at K. 

 Brown's suggestion, he gave the name Podocarya. The fossil was 

 found in the inferior Oolite, at Charmouth, Dorsetshire. It is the 

 size of a large orange, and composed of an indefinite number of cells, 

 each containing, near the surface, a single longish seed, about the 

 size of a grain of rice. The cells were separated from the spadix by 

 long fibrous footstalks, and were surmounted by hexagonal tubercles, 

 in the centre of which could be seen the remains of a stigma. It is 

 to be regretted that Brown did not communicate to Buckland a 

 written description of this hitherto unique fossil fruit, for a loose- 

 ness of language and defects in knowledge are to be found in the 

 account of the fossil which cannot be charged to him. It is said that 

 " the collection of the seeds into drupes, surrounded by a hard nut, in 

 the fruit of Pandanus, forms the essential difference between this 

 genus and Podocarya^ But the fruits of a large number of species 

 of Pandanus consist of separate one-seeded drupes, and if each seed 

 in Podocarya be considered as contained in a distinct drupe, there is 

 no essential difference between these species and the fossil. I am in- 

 clined, however, to consider it rather as a more complete condition 

 of the union of the ovaries into groups than any form among recent 

 fruits — a condition in which all the drupes were as thoroughly 

 united as they are in each of the phalanges of the fruit of Eydouxia 

 macrocarpa, Gaud. In the species with such compound fruits, the 

 fibrous pedicles are much longer than in the other species, forming 

 another point of correspondence with the fossil. • 



1 The external markings of the stems found hy Mr. W. H. Bensted in the 

 Iguanodon quarry, and named by Konig Braccena Benstedii, are more like those of 

 a Pandanus than a Braccena^ but the remains of wood in the interior of these stems 

 suggest doubts as to whether they belong to either the one or the other. I hope to 

 obtain a section of one of the stems and to examine the minute structure of the wood, 

 and I may then be able to determine, with more certainty, their systematic position. 



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