516 PETRIFIED STEMS OF PALM TREES. 
also in the Fresh water formation of Mont 
Martre.* — It is stated, that at Liblar, near Co- 
logne, they have been seen in a vertical posi- 
tion. t Beautifully silieified stems of Palm Trees 
abound in Antigua, and in India, and on the 
banks of the Irawadi, in the kingdom of Ava. 
It is not surprising to find the remains of Palms 
in warm latitudes where plants of this family are 
now indigenous, as in Antigua or India ; but 
their occurrence in the Tertiary formations of 
Europe, associated with the remains of Croco- 
diles and Tortoises, and with marine shells, nearly 
allied to forms which are at present found in seas 
tiful fossil Trunk in the Museum at Paris, allied to the family of 
Palms, and nearly four feet in circumference, from the lower 
region of the Calcaire Grossier at Vaillet near Soissons. M. 
Brongniart has applied to this fossil the name of Endogenites 
echinatus. The projecting bodies that surround it, like the 
foliage of a Corinthian Capital, are the persistent portions of 
fallen Petioles which remain adhering to the stem after the leaves 
themselves have fallen off. They have a dilated base embracing 
one-fourth or one-third of the stem ; the form of these bases, and 
the disposition of their woody tissue in fasciculi of fibres, refer 
this fossil to some arborescent Monocotyledonous Tree allied to 
Palms. 
* Prostrate trunks of Palm trees of considerable size are found 
in the argillaceous marl beds above the Gypsum strata of the 
Paris Basin, together with shells of Lymnea and Planorbis ; as 
these Trunks occur here in fresh water deposits they can not 
have been drifted by marine current from distant regions, but 
were probably natives of Europe, and of France. 
f It is not shewn whether these Palm trees were drifted into 
this position, or are still standing in the spot whereon they grew 
like the Cycadites and Coniferse in the Isle of Portland. 
