98 



BRITISH EOCENE ELORA. 



leaves were in this instance thin and not fully developed, for the same waviness 

 discernible in the right-hand leaves of fig. 3 is visible in recent leaves pressed under 

 such conditions. 



As remarked by Prof. Olliver, who at once pronounced them to be Podocarps,' even 

 were the specimens living it would not be possible to assign them with certainty to any 

 particular species. There are in fact more than a dozen living Podocarps with very 

 similar foliage, distributed in a great belt extending from Venezuela to Chili, the 

 Cape and Tropical Africa, through Hindustan to Japan, and down to the Fiji Isles, New 

 Caledonia, and Queensland. In nearly all these, the leaves, it is true, are usually 

 arranged in whorls and are more or less tufted, and they also taper more to the base 

 and possess longer foot-stalks ; but in some of these species the leaves seem 

 occasionally to revert to the distichous arrangement, and it is therefore not easy to say 

 definitely that the fossil represents any one species to the exclusion of others. The most 

 perfect resemblance is, perhaps, to be found in one of the specimens of P. falcaia^ R. 

 Brown, at Kew, in which the leaves are almost sessile, broadest near the base, and in two 

 rows. This is a native of the Cape and tropical Africa. Another species very closely 

 resembling it is P. Thunhergii, Hook. ; an immense tree known at the Cape as " Yellow 

 Wood." Of the other species, most are large trees, and very few are hardy; but 

 young plants of many of them are to be seen in cultivation in the Great Conservatory 

 at Kew. 



There are no other genera of Conifers with which it can possibly be mistaken. The 

 regular and crowded arrangement, in two even rows, of the leaves of Cephalotuxus and 

 Torreya suffice to distinguish them from it at the first glance. Its resemblance to 

 some Bamboos is far more striking, though of course merely superficial. 



Attention had already been called in this work ^ to the presence of Podocarpus in the 



Ardtun Beds. Scattered leaves are not very rare in the black shales, but their 



preservation did not admit of any description or further determination being hazarded. 



It cannot be identified with any of the numerous detached leaves that have been figured 



from the various Tertiary Leaf-beds of Europe. It best agrees with P. hceringiana, Ett. 



(P. eoccBuica, \}w^QY,Jide Heer), from Haring, and P. eocanica, described by Ettingshausen 



from Bilin, and from the Saxon Brown-coal, by Engelhardt. Its complete absence 



from all the Arctic Floras described by Heer, and from all the Cretaceous and Tertiary 



Floras of North America, is far more important, and probably a fact of some significance 



in the history of the existing distribution of plants.^ 



^ Newberry, Carruthers, Britten, and otlier botanists who have seen the specimens or the plate are 

 agreed upon this. 



2 Pp. 13,48. 



3 " Only three or four species are suflSciently hardy for cultivation in this country, and these require 

 warm and sheltered spots. Other species are noteworthy for their great value as timber-producing trees 

 in their native countries, as the Totara Pine of New Zealand, the Podocarpus cupressina of Java, &c." — 

 ' Veitch's Manual of the Coniferse,' p. 317. 



