58 Berry — Nijpa-palm in the North American Eocene. 



of these fossils — Cocos Bxirtini for Burtin's Belgian speci- 

 mens, Cocos JParkinsonis for Parkinson's English specimens, 

 and a third, Cocos Faujasii, for the French specimens described 

 and figured by Faujas in the first volume of the Annals of the 

 Paris Museum. In 1837 Bronn* substituted the generic term 

 Cocites for Brongniart's term Cocos. 



Meanwhile Thunberg in 1782 had given a somewhat meagre 

 description of the existing Nipa-palm. This preliminary infor- 

 mation was much amplified in 1819 in a memoir by Billardiere 

 published in the Paris Museum memoirs and devoted entirely 

 to the Nipa. Hence in 1840 when Bowerbank monographed 

 the fossil fruits and seeds from the famous deposits of the 

 Island of Sheppey, he was familiar with the modern Nipa and 

 had even seen specimens of its fruits that had been brought to 

 England by travellers. He therefore renamed the fossils Nipa- 

 dites and described and figured no less than thirteen different 

 species from the deposits of the old Eocene delta represented 

 by the London clays. These were based, for the most part, 

 on variations of form and condition of preservation. Modern 

 authors have greatly reduced the ranks of Bowerbank's species, 

 recognizing that the variations recorded were largely dependent 

 on the position and relative development of the individual 

 fruits in the inflorescence or head. 



In 1855 Massalongof found similar fossil fruits in the Ter- 

 tiary of the province of Yerona in northern Ital}\ He did 

 not recognize their identity with the English, French and 

 Belgian fossils and described them under the genus Palseo- 

 keura which he referred to the Pandanaceae. More recently 

 Schmalhausen^: has described Nipadites from the Spondylus 

 zone of the Eocene at Kiew in southern Russia, and Bonnet§ 

 has described a gigantic form from Giouchy in the Mokattam 

 Mountains east of Cairo in Egypt (etage Lutetien). 



A complete bibliography of the; publications devoted to 

 Nipadites would include a considerable number of additional 

 titles, of which I will mention but two — one a very satisfactory 

 revision of the fossil forms by Rendle|| that appeared in 1893 

 and the second a monograph of the Belgian forms by Seward 

 and Arber^[ which was published in 1903. The latter authors 



* Bronn, Lethaea geognostica, vol. i. p. 861, 1737. 



f Massalongo, Sopra un nuova genere di Pandanee fossili della Provincia 

 Veronese. 



JSehmalhausen, Pal. Abhandl. Dames and Kayser, vol. i, p. 12, pi. 30 (3), 

 figs. 2-6, 1884. 



§ Bonnet, Bull. Mus. d'Hist. Nat., Paris, 1904, pp. 499-502, 2 figs. 



|| Rendle, Revision of the genus Nipadites, Bowerbank, Journ. Linn. Soc. 

 Lond., vol. xxx. 1893. 



11" Seward and Arber, Les Nipadites des conches fiocenes de la Belgiqne. 

 Mem. Mnsee Roy. d'Hist. nat. Beige., ii, 1903. 



