650 



The Lignite of Bovey Tracey. 

 By Clement Eeid, F.K.S., and Eleanor M. Eeid, B.Sc. 



(Received May 30,— Read June 16, 1910.) 



(Abstract.) 



In 1863, Heer and Pengelly published in the ' Phil. Trans.' an account 

 of these lignite-beds and their flora. Heer classed the lignite as Lower 

 Miocene, considering it equivalent to the Aquitanian of France and to the 

 Hamstead Beds of the Isle of Wight. These latter are now referred to 

 the Middle Oligocene, and many of the other deposits called Lower Miocene 

 in Heer's day are now classed as Upper Oligocene. 



A statement by Mr. Starkie Gardner, that Heer's Bovey plants are the 

 same as those found in the Bournemouth Beds (Middle Eocene), has caused 

 the Bovey Beds to be classed as Eocene in recent text-books and on recent 

 maps of the Geological Survey, leaving a great gap in the geological record 

 in Britain. Every division, from Upper Oligocene to Upper Miocene, was 

 supposed to be missing. 



Our recent researches have not supported this view, but tend rather to 

 show that Heer was right — the Bovey lignite is highest Oligocene, or perhaps 

 lowest Miocene. We could not find in the Bournemouth collection (now in 

 the British Museum) anything to support Gardner's view, and he does not 

 appear to have collected at Bovey, his comments referring to the collection 

 now in the Museum of Practical Geology. We therefore made a collection of 

 seeds and fruits in the Bovey deposits, as far as the flooded state of the 

 lignite-pit would allow, in order to settle if possible the true age of the 

 lignite. 



The results were unexpected, for by using new methods we obtained a 

 considerable number of species, and they were mainly identical with well- 

 known plants of the lignite of the Wetterau, which is generally classed as 

 Upper Oligocene. In certain cases, better specimens showed also that Heer's 

 supposed peculiar species of Bovey belong to well-known forms of the Rhine 

 lignite — his Vitis britannica, for instance, is only a crushed seed of Viiis 

 teutonica. Several curious new species wci'e discovered, including the earliest 

 known Hubus, a peculiar J'olrmof/don, and a new genus of Boraginccc. 



A study of tlu! anatomy of the cone and leaf of Sequoia coiMsia: proves 

 that it is a true Sequoia, not, as has l)eon suggested, a species of Athrotaxis. 



