GYMNOSPERMiE. 



47 



temples and is unknown in a wild state, the aboriginal stock having possibly become 

 extinct.^ 



Imported into England about 1754, it thence found its way to the Continent, and 

 now flourishes and bears fruit abundantly in Padua, Avignon, Montpellier, &c., and has 

 even been known (1853) to fruit at Versailles. It is sterile at Geneva and almost 

 everywhere to the north, and the isotherm best fitted to it would therefore seem that of 

 the Corea or even a little to the north of that point. It requires a considerable summer 

 heat. 



Although fossil species of the Jurassic period have been met with so far south as 

 Yorkshire, it appears to have been an essentially northern genus, for it disappears from 

 temperate Europe thenceforward with slight exception until the Pliocene age. It is 

 everywhere unknown, except from polar regions, during the older Tertiaries ; a supposed 

 species from the Missisippi having proved to be a fragment of Lygodium, and it therefore 

 seems somewhat unlikely that the high temperature in which vegetation flourished late 

 in the London-Clay time would have been favorable to its growth. The doubt which 

 must exist, in the absence of any foliage of the genus in other Eocene deposits, whether 

 the resemblance which these seeds bear to Ginkgo may not be accidental, is at least 

 shared by Saporta. 



Tribe IV.— PODOCARPE^E. 



The tribe contains, according to the Genera plantariim, but three genera. Two of 

 these, MiCROCACHRYS, a small shrub confined to Tasmania, and Saxe-Gothea, a larger 

 bush confined to the mountains of Patagonia, are each represented by a single existing 

 species, nothing yet being known of their ancestry. The seeds in both are contained 

 in small fleshy cones. The third genus, Podocarpus, is widely distributed throughout 

 the Eocenes of Southern Europe. 



■ 



Genus — Podocarpus. 



The flowers are dioecious or rarely moncccious ; the fruit is cither drupaceous or 

 nut-like, and inverted ; the seeds are hard, with a crustaceous integument ; the leaves 

 coriaceous, and either opposite, alternate, or scattered, linear or oblong, with a single 

 median nerve, or more rarely with a dicotyledonous venation. The genus contains fifty- 

 nine species, according to Gordon, many of which, however, are so little known that 

 Hooker and Bentham believe them capable of reduction to forty. These are divided into 

 four sections : — Nageia, with opposite or alternate many-veined leaves and round 

 1 Masters, 'Linn. Soc. Journal,' vol. viii, p. 481, "On the Coniferse of Japan." 



