72 BRITISH CHAEOPHYTA. 



A SKETCH OF THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF 

 THE CHAROPHYTA. 



For considerably more than a century the fossil fruits 

 of Charophytes have been known to geologists, though 

 it was some time before their real nature was recognized. 

 Their occurrence was apparently first brought to notice 

 in 1785 in a paper read before the Academic des Sciences 

 in Paris, by Dufouxny de Villiers, who styled them 

 "tourbillons ou vortex," and regarded them as Bchino- 

 derms. This paper does not appear to have been 

 published. Lamarck (9)* subsequently named them 

 Gyrogonites and considered them Mollusca. Leman (10), 

 in 1812, was, I believe, the first to identify them with 

 the Charophyt.a. The earlier discoveries of the fruits were 

 made in some of the fresh- and brackish-water beds 

 of the Eocene and Oligocene series, in which they occur 

 in the greatest profusion. They have subsequently 

 been traced downwards to several of the formations of 

 the Mesozoic era, but, up to quite recently, the earliest 

 remains which could with certainty be referred to the 

 Charophyta had been obtained from the Oolites. It is 

 true that in 1867 Moore (13) published the name Chara 

 liassica, without figure or description, in respect to a 

 single " seed-vessel . . . associated with the Liassic 

 remains from the Charterhouse Mine." In the absence 

 of the specimen, which we understand cannot be traced, 

 and with such meagre information, the occurrence of 

 these plants in the Lias is open to grave doubt. 



Owing, apparently, to some error, Charophyte-remains 

 are reported in some of the text-books, as well as by 

 Schimper (20), as having been found in the Muschel- 

 kalk (Triassic) in the environs of Moscow. I have not 

 been able to trace the source of this report, and, accord- 



* The numbers after the names of authors cited refer to the list of books 

 and papers on pp. 89-90. 



