Berry — Saccoglottis, Recent and Fossil. 129 



region before the Isthmus of Panama was closed, and the 

 presence of a well marked fossil species, to be described 

 presently, suggests an American origin for the family, 

 and suggests further, that the single west African coastal 

 species reached that continent either by means of an 

 equatorial counter current, or before the continental out- 

 lines had assumed their modern form. As I have pointed 

 out on a former occasion, there are a number of facts 

 which suggest that Guppy, in his admirable studies on 

 distribution, has underestimated the possibilities in this 

 direction. Although the main equatorial currents might 

 be expected to carry coastal types with seaworthy fruits 

 from the Old to the New World, I see slight evidence of 

 this ever having taken place, and there is a considerable 

 body of evidence of dispersal in the opposite direction. 

 If the present currents in the equatorial Atlantic pre- 

 clude effective dispersal from west to east then we are 

 forced to assume that the Tertiary oceanic circulation in 

 this region differed from its present arrangement, and 

 this could readily be brought about by changed conti- 

 nental outlines, even though we are not in a position to 

 predict at the present time just what these outlines were. 

 One of the most interesting localities that I visited in 

 1919 was a place called Pisllypampa in the mountains 

 north of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Here on a bleak and 

 treeless pampa at an elevation of 11,800 feet I found a 

 rich tropical flora of Pliocene age preserved in beds of 

 tuff. This flora will be described in full in the Hopkins 

 Studies in Geology. One of the most abundant elements 

 in this Pliocene flora were the fruits of a species of Sac- 

 coglottis, which may be described as follows : 



Saccoglottis tertiaria Berry, n. sp. 



Fruits relatively small, varying from globular to pro- 

 late spheroidal in form, sometimes somewhat flattened by 

 pressure during fossilization. Drupaceous in character, 

 the thin outer flesh (sarcotesta or epicarp) being pre- 

 served as a carbonaceous incrustation in several speci- 

 mens. The bulk of the fruit consisting of a woody stone 

 or pericarp. The surface is slightly irregularly mam- 

 nlilated or warty, and thickly impregnated with resinous 

 cysts, whose cavities conspicuously and thickly pit the 

 surface of the woody stone with depressions from 1 to 2 



