32 



BRITISH EOCENE ELORA. 



very delicate and partly distichous foliage shown in fig. 3 is also occasionally met with in 

 the existing species. 



The fossil differs very considerably from the ordinary forms of Taxodium distichum, 

 but strangely resembles, even in very minute particulars, the variety T. imhricataria, 

 Mett., which inhabits, as an inscription in the Kew collection states, "ponds in the 

 pine forests of Elorida." The length and slenderness of the branches in both cases 

 suggest a somev\?hat pendulous habit, and the texture of the fossil leads to the belief that 

 it was not very leathery, and of probably a brightish green. 



Taxodium disticlium forms very extensive forests. The Deciduous Cypress, as it is 

 called, is described as towering over all the vegetation of the Great Dismal Swamp, with 

 its top spreading in full leaf in the season when the sun's rays are hottest, and when, if 

 not intercepted by a screen of foliage, they might soon cause the fallen leaves and dead 

 foliage to decompose, instead of contributing to the peaty mass. The White Cedar, 

 Thuya sphceroidea, forms a dense undergrowth, firmly supported by its long tap-roots in 

 the softest part of the quagmire, whose surface is carpeted with Eerns and Reeds. The 

 association of this with a Cypress in the " Coastguard-beds " at Bournemouth, and with 

 many Eerns of the sub-tropics of North America, shows that it may have grown there in 

 not altogether dissimilar stations. 



While the most heat- and moisture-loving of all the forms of Taxodium distichum 

 has never been met wdth elsewhere, and is, even at Bournemouth, limited to a single bed, 

 other varieties of the same species are very abundant in European Tertiaries. The most 

 familiar type of Taxodium distichum with distichous and deciduous leaves, that which 

 withstands our own climate at the present day, has been met with fossil in the Tertiaries of 

 Atanekerdluk, in Greenland, of Alaska, and Spitzbergen. Eurther south magnificent 

 specimens have been obtained from the Miocene of the Baltic Coast, and figured by 

 Heer as T. distichum miocamm. Two other varieties are met with, one of them, a 

 Spitzbergen form named T. angustifolium,, approaching nearer, according to Heer, to T. 

 mexicanum. Eoliage assigned to the Miocene Taxodium distichum is also stated to have 

 been found at numerous localities, especially in the newer Miocenes of Austria, Italy, 

 Switzerland, the South of Erance, and the United States ; but, as cones are, in scarcely 

 any instance, associated with the foliage some doubt about it still exists. There can, how- 

 ever, be no doubt that the temperate type of the species, after flourishing in the Arctic 

 regions during the Eocene, descended, as temperatures decreased towards the close 

 of the Miocene, as far as Central Europe and to the United States. That type is quite 

 unknown in any Eocene deposit of temperate Europe, though Glyptostrobus is very 

 universal. Sir Joseph Hooker^ looked upon it as the most interesting of the Arctic 

 fossils. 



The Bournemouth species is wholly confined to the uppermost of the " Coastguard- 

 beds " below the Black Bed, where it is associated with a luxuriant Elora. 



1 'Ann. Add. Royal Society,' 1877, p. 10. 



