44 



BRITISH EOCENE ELORA. 



and they can, in fact, be traced with almost certainty to the Carboniferous through ances- 

 tral forms of Ginkgo. No other Taxads are known of greater age than the Cretaceous. 

 Torrelia}^ of the Tertiary of Alaska possesses long, narrow, leathery leaves, rounded at 

 the end, and with forked venation, conjectured to be coniferous from the base of the 

 leaf being articulated. Distichous twigs have been described frequently from Cretaceous 

 and Tertiary beds as " Taxites'' but in most instances later discoveries have led to a 

 different interpretation. 



There is no conclusive evidence of the presence of Taxus, or the Yew, in any Eocenes, 

 though a few berries are ascribed to it from the Wetterau. It contains about seven 

 species, all hardy, and confined to temperate Europe, Asia, and America. Taxus baccata 

 is one of the three Conifers indigenous to Great Britain, and grows in most parts of 

 Europe at heights of from 1000 to 4000 feet. The species generally resemble each other, 

 the most remarkable being T. WallicMana of Northern India, which forms vast forests at 

 elevations of from 8000 to 10,000 feet, and even ascends in Bhotan as a dwarfed 

 form to 11,800 feet. 



ToRREYA has not been found fossil in the Eocenes of temperate Europe. Two species 

 are described by Heer (vol. iii, ' Elor. Arctica ') from the Cretaceous of Kome, from 

 foliage and a small detached globose nut ; Taxites onicrojjJii/Uus, from Alaska, may 

 represent another species. Saporta connects them with T. tiucifera of China and Japan, 

 through Taxites validus^ Hr., of the Baltic Miocene. The leaves seem not to have been 

 distichous but in opposite pairs, and their real affinities may still perhaps be doubted. 

 Torreya nucifera brevifolia from the Pliocene of Meximieux is, however, scarcely to be 

 distinguished by any character from the Japanese species ; and Saporta also believes that 

 a branchlet from Bilin, figured by Ettingshausen as Sequoia Langsdorjii, is a representa- 

 tive of T. taxifolia of Florida. There now exist but three or four species, all natives of 

 North America, Japan, and China. The fruit is plum-like, containing a single seed 

 enclosed in a hard shell, and the leaves linear and subspiral or distichous. It presents 

 another instance of a Conifer existing in the Arctic Circle during the Eocene, and only 

 spreading over Europe and America towards the later Miocene. 



The genus Phyllocladus, or Celery-leaved Pines, contains trees of moderate 

 growth, which are natives of New Zealand, Borneo, and Tasmania. The branchlets are 

 leaf-like and feather-nerved ; the leaves themselves are reduced to minute, scale-like bodies 

 on the margins of the branchlets. The only fossil referred to the genus is from the 

 Upper Cretaceous of Spitzbergen, but even this possesses hardly the most slender 

 character connecting it with Phyllocladus. Ph^erosph^ra, a genus with small scale-like 

 foliage and solitary fleshy fruit, contains but a single species from Tasmania. Dacry- 

 DiUM contains some ten species, natives of the Malays, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, 

 Tasmania, and Chili. One, D. cu2Jressinum, is said to reach 200 feet in height, and D. 

 elatum and D. Franklinii are also very lofty trees, while, on the other hand, D. laxifolium 

 1 Heer ; not to be confounded witb the existing Torreya. 



