A MONOGRAPH 



ON THE 



BRITISH EOCENE FLORA. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The study of Tertiary fossil floras appears bitherto to have had so few attractions that 

 not one of the many competent British botanists has expressed a wish to undertake it. 

 The material is fragmentary, and important organs are wanting, and they therefore consider 

 the conclusions based, upon them to be unsatisfactory. I would willingly have allowed, 

 for my part, that my labour should have consisted in collecting specimens and accumulating 

 facts for the use of men with more special knowledge, but on account of their silence, 

 and lest the material should perish, I here venture to describe the British Eocene 

 Coniferae. 



Such considerations have not weighed to the same extent abroad, and so large a 

 number of works have been published oq fossil plants that it seems strange that scientific 

 speculation should have been so little influenced by them. The most ordinary inductions 

 that these investigations might have given rise to have been overlooked, though they 

 would often have facilitated the determination of the plants themselves. 



The Marquis de Saporta, whose work takes the widest grasp, has almost alone seized 

 the obvious inference that a flora within the Arctic circle must, in a period of decreasing 

 temperature, have preceded the same flora in the latitude of Italy ; and if the theory so ably 

 argued by him, that a large proportion of the Miocene flora actually originated in the 

 north, requires modification through more recent discoveries, it has at least served its 

 purpose in rendering new departures possible. Any endeavour to connect the facts 

 before us one with another, and render them intelligible, must add to their importance 

 and enable geologists to follow with increased interest a study hitherto given over to 

 specialists. 



Our Eocene floras, from below the London Clay, for example, seem exceedingly 

 homogeneous and present relatively few species. They are, as long since pointed out by 

 Sir J. Hooker, in the case of fossil plants from Reading, of remarkably temperate 

 aspect, the leaves and fruits of the Plane tree being conspicuous, among a number of 

 undetermined prevailing types. This flora has sufficient leaves and fruit identical with 



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