1880.] Notes on the Flowering of Saxifraga sarmentosa, 569 
Schimper, the latter having been applied PY him to true Eocene 
floras, 
With regard to the flora of the Great (1st group of Lesquereux) 
Lignite, I entertain no doubt whatever that it is of the age of our 
Middle Eocene, and perhaps partly of our Lower Eocene. I am 
not in a position yet to furnish any list of the fossil plants com- 
mon to both, but the proportion is very considerable. The only 
groups I have studied are the ferns. Of a small list from our 
Middle Eocene, two of the most abundant have been described 
by Lesquereux from this formation, Lygodium kaulfussi Heer 
(L. neuropteroides Lesq.) and Osmunda! (?) subcretacea Saporta 
(Gymnogramma haydent Lesq.). Mr. Lesquereux has very gen- 
erously himself assisted in these identifications, and I desire to 
express to him my thanks for his disinterested aid. 
In addition to the similarity of the floras, there is other strong 
proof that the two formations are approximately contemporaneous. 
While in our lower Eocene deposits there appears but a small 
mixture of North American forms, so far as I know at present, in 
the Middle Eocene they suddenly greatly preponderate, almost 
to the exclusion of the Australian elemeat previously manifest, 
and even of what was possibly an older indigenous flora. Judg- 
ing as well from the Great Lignitic flora as from our own Middle 
Eocene, it appears evident that at this period land communica- 
tion somewhere existed between them, which enabled them to 
mingle to a very great extent; so much so, indeed, that the Plio- 
cene flora of California, lately described by Lesquereux, more 
resembles our Middle Eocene Bournemouth flora as a whole, not 
Specifically, than any other with which I am acquainted. 
:0: 
MULES ON THE FLOWERING OF SAXIFRAGA SAR- 
MENTOSA. 
BY PROF, J. E. TODD. 
A a often sees in window-gardens the plant popularly called 
strawberry geranium. As commonly seen, perched in a 
flower pot on a bracket, it seems to delight in letting down its 
young plantlets at the ends of thread-like runners, sounding the 
airy depths for resting places for them. Thus its native instincts 
appear, though many eee have passed since its ancestors 
1 
‘More properly a new genus. 
VOL. XIV.—NO, Vi. 37 
