290 



MK. J. S. GARDNER ON THE LEAE-BEDS 



Forbes, the leaves of which attained the large size of 15 inches, 

 measured from base to tip. The variation in shape among them is 

 very great, and might give rise to numbers of species, for the forms 

 of the lobes and the serration differ so widely that mere fragments 

 could hardly be identified. The external resemblance of the leaf to 

 Platanus is very superficial, and Prof. Forbes's determination was 

 confessedly a mere guess, for the fragments he had to deal with bore 

 at least an equal resemblance to the leaves of many other kinds of 

 plants ; but in 1885 whole slabs of limestone were found to be 

 covered with innumerable minute seed-like bodies (PI. XIII. fig. 14a, 

 magnified) ; and in other cases clusters of small globular catkins were 

 found (PI. XIII. fig. 15). Last year the specimens figs. 13 & 14, 

 showing the catkins in the act of breaking up, supplemented these 

 and proved them to belong to the same plant. The small bodies were 

 recognized immediately, and quite independently, by Mr. Carruthers 

 and Prof. Oliver, as the anthers of a Platanus. We thus find the 

 male flowers in enormous abundance ; but fig. 12 represents the only 

 object resembling the female, a fact the more singular as it is pre- 

 cisely reversed at Reading, where leaves of Platanus also abound. 

 The leaves occur in great profusion, especially in some of the layers 

 of black shale. They have been collected at Atanekerdluk, but of 

 much smaller size, by Whymper, Colomb, and others, and being 

 wholly different from any Miocene form, should bear the name given 

 by Forbes. Another very fine and undescribed form occurs in the 

 Limestone ; and a rarer leaf in the black shale which is common at 

 Atanekerdluk, and has been called Quercus platania, and apparently 

 also Pter os per mites spectabilis and P. alternans, by Heer. Among 

 the large leaves in the clays, seen but not collected, appeared to be 

 forms like those described from Atanekerdluk as Viburnum multi- 

 nerve, Alnus Kefersteini, Magnolia. Inglejieldi, &c, from Greenland, 

 but of relatively much larger size. 



The only other lobed leaf in the flora is the Acer-looking leaf 

 (Pl.XIV. fig. 1), of which the smallest and most exquisitely preserved 

 specimen is figured. There is nothing resembling the Liquidambar or 

 Sassafras found in the Atanekerdluk level of similar age. 



Among the ovate-serrate leaves, that called Corylus Macquarrii by 

 Heer, PI. XV. fig. 3, is the most striking, and occurs most commonly 

 in the Limestone. It is of a dark brown colour, and certainly resem- 

 bles the hazel in a striking degree. Thin pellicles occur, PI. XIII. 

 figs. 5, 6, 10, in the same beds, with parallel and forking venation, 

 which might be fragments of the husk ; but the total absence every- 

 where in the Eocene of anything like nuts, and their abundance in 

 the Pliocene, renders it difficult to believe that the genus Corylus 

 was actually in existence during early Tertiary periods. The leaf 

 form recurs in many genera, and we must probably look elsewhere 

 for an acceptable determination. The same doubt, and for the 

 same reasons, extends to all the determinations of Cupuliferce from 

 the older Tertiaries, except the Betulea;, and also to those of the 

 Juglandece. The Corylus-like leaf is found very commonly at 

 Atanekerdluk, and the species might be known provisionally as 

 Corylites Macquarrii. 



