136 



BRITISH EOCENE ELORA. 



— first tliat a basalt dyke had saved them from being denuded away ; secondly, a 

 railway was planned across them to avoid a gradient that would not now present any 

 difficulty ; thirdly, that they stood high enough above the general level to necessitate 

 a cutting, the Ballypalady Elora would have remained unknown. Its preservation 

 happily shows us that the remains of such gregarious and local trees as Pines and 

 Eirs may find their way in great abundance into the river-muds at one place, without 

 betraying any trace of their presence in other not far distant muds, deposited apparently 

 under the same conditions. But for accident we might have drawn a conclusion relative 

 to the North-British Eocene similar to that we have just considered regarding the 

 Eocene of our Southern Counties, but which would have been utterly erroneous. So 

 unsafe must inferences ever be in this study when founded on negative evidence. 



With regard to the leading species, Finns plutonis, Baily, of Ballypalady, further 

 research has shown a considerable resemblance between its cones and those of P. 



Quenstedti, Heer, of the Cretaceous Quadersandstein of Mole- 

 tein,^ the only difference being in the somewhat larger size of 

 the latter, though the associated needles are thought to be in 

 bundles of five. Other species as old resemble it, and its 

 cylindrical form may be takenas a possible indication of con- 

 iderable antiquity. 



None of the other genera of the Abietineoe are well repre- 

 sented, but a number of fragments are placed together in the 

 genus Tsu^a, simply because the more perfect cones resemble 

 those belonging to living species of that genus more than any 

 other. Sir Joseph Hooker has kindly reminded me that the 

 generic characters upon which Tsi'(^a is separated from Abies 

 are not, and could not well be, apparent in the fossils. The 

 determination is based on general likeness, and on such 

 characters as are visible, and is not a strictly scientific one, nor 

 one to which importance need be attached. The Pines, Firs, 

 Larches, and Cedars belong to the most recently developed 

 tribe of Conifers, and so far, none of their species had, even in 

 the Eocene, assumed the precise forms met with at the present 

 day. 



Fig. 42. — Monstrous cone of 

 Abies VeitcJdi, with bracts 

 reverting into foliage leaves, 

 and the axis prolonged into a 

 branc.'hlet with ordinary leaves. 

 (' Veitch's Manual.') 



1 [Heer, " Beitriige zur Kreide-Flora," 1, 'Neue Denkschr. der Schweiz. Gesell.,' 1869.] 



