GYMNOSPERMtE. 55 



perfectly erect trunks and horizontal or decumbent branches in whorls. They present a 

 singular and unmistakably archaic appearance, and are divided into two distinct sections : 

 Columbea, or true, and Eutassa, or false, Araucarias. The former comprises four species, all 

 of great dimensions, the most familiar being the Arauc. imhricafa of Chili, where it forms 

 vast forests, extending on the Andes from the snow-level, 1500 or 2000 feet downwards. 

 A second American species is confined to Brazil, a third to a tract thirty miles long and 

 only twelve miles broad, near Brisbane in Australia, and the fourth is only indigenous to 

 Porte Molle, one of the Caledonian Isles, where it is confined to the summit of an extinct 

 volcano, only half a mile in radius. The Columbeas have not been met with fossil, either 

 in the Eocene or Cretaceous rocks, except from New Zealand, where two species are 

 known from Cretaceous coal-bearing beds, and have been figured by Dr. Hector, though 

 yet undescribed. The rarity of their preservation is not surprising, because their stations 

 are mostly high rocky ridges, where there is an absence of water, rendering it unlikely 

 that their remains would find their way into marine or fluviatile sedimentary strata. 

 It would be unsafe, therefore, to infer that species belonging to this section did not exist 

 in Europe contemporaneously with the species of Eutassa that have been found. 



The Eiitassas possess but three known existing species, all of gigantic size. One, a 

 native of New Caledonia and New Hebrides, presents a fantastic columnar-like growth, over 

 200 feet in height ; another, Arauc. excelsa, is indigenous to Australia and Norfolk Island, 

 and towers to a height of 230 feet, with a trunk thirty feet in girth. The third 

 grows in Australia, and is referred to in the description of the fossil species. All the 

 species, it is very important to notice, are polymorphous, and the foliage when young 

 differs considerably from that of adult trees. 



Schimper states that with the Tertiaries the Araucarias became extinct in Europe, and 

 Thiselton Dyer even believed them to have been extinct north of the Equator since the 

 Oolitic age.^ They seem, however, to have remained until the close of the Eocene. 



Araucaria Goepperti, Sternb. (sp.). PI. XI, fig. 1 ; and PI. XII. 



Araucarites Goepperti, Sternberg. Verst, vol. ii, p. 204, pi. 39, fig. 4, 1821— 



1838. 

 Steinhauera scbglobosa, Presl. In Sternb., Flora der Vorwelt, vol. ii, p. 202- 



pi. xlix, &c., 1821—1838. 

 Araucarites Sternbergi, Goepp. In Bronn, Geschiclite d. Natur., vol. iii, p, 41, 



and also of numerous authors, 1841 — 1849. 

 Sequoia Sternbergi, Heer. Urw. d. Schweiz., p. 310, 1864, and later works. 

 Aeaucaria veneta, Mass. Spec. Photogr., p. 69, pi. xxi, 1859. 



'Roy, Geog. Soc. Proceedings,' 1878, vol. xxii, p. 427. 



