20 



BRITISH EOCENE FLORA. 



and inhabit Southern Europe, China, California, Mexico, Guatemala, North America, 

 and the East Indies. Some form stately trees, exceeding even 150 feet in height. 

 Hitherto it has only been known fossil from two Miocene localities in Germany, and 

 from Antrim and Italy ; but in the latter cases especially the determinations appear 

 founded on wholly insufficient material. 



CupREssus TAxiFORMis, linger, sp. Plate I, figs 1 — 13; PI. V, figs. 13, 14 ; PI. VII, 



fig. 8 ; PI. IX, figs. 22—26, 28—30. 



Taxites acicblakis, Ad. Brovcjn. Prodrome des plantes foss., Calc. gross., Descr. 



Env. de Paris, p. 362, 1828. 

 CupRESSiTES TAXiFOKMis, linger. Chloris Protogeea, p. 18, pi. viii, figs. 1 — 3 ; pi. ix, 



figs. 1—4, 1847. 



— — Be la Harpe. Mem. Geol. Survey, Isle of Wight, p. Ill, 



pi. V, fig. 2, 1862. 



Middle Bagshot, Bournemouth. 



The cones are ligneous and subglobose, broader than high, and 12 to 16 millimetres 

 in diameter. The scales are eight in number, in four unequal pairs, subangular, four-, 

 or five-sided, depressed, and wdth strong wrinkles converging towards a sub-central 

 mucro, and with slightly thickened and recurved edges. The four basal scales are 

 sometimes trilobate and always coalesce into a single unequal quatrefoil round the foot- 

 stalk, one pair, however, being relatively shortened. The next pair are opposite and 

 five-sided, and the uppermost pair rather smaller, quadrate, and sometimes soldered 

 together. 



The foliage is polymorphic. In the young and barren shoots it is spiral, but with 

 two lateral rows of leaflets expanded, and the rest decurrent and relatively undeveloped. 

 The expanded leaflets are linear, rarely linear-lanceolate, from 3 millimetres to 15 milli- 

 metres in length, opposite or alternate, seldom crowded or overlapping, with acute, 

 sometimes mucronate, symmetric, or more often asymmetric apex and indistinct 

 midrib. This type, though generally separate, occasionally passes into the ordinary 

 imbricated foliage on the same shoot. The scale-like foliage is loosely imbricated and 

 of various shapes, spiral, in apparently six rows, sometimes short and acute or obtuse- 

 pointed, or longer, adpressed, and decurrent, awl-shaped, blunt, or acutely pointed, and 

 occasionally spinous. 



The leaflets are very persistent to the stem, less expanded than in Sequoia polymorplia, 

 more pointed, and of more delicate texture, more regular and expanded than in 

 Glyptostrobus, and less crowded than in the Alum Bay Podocarp. The shoots or 

 branchlets were shed simple, for among many I have rarely seen one compound. The 

 longest is 12 centimetres in length, but the average is only from 4 to 6 centimetres. 



