02 
SHEPPEY FRUITS. 
examining tlie fruits of trees and fragments 
of wood found abundantly in the Isle of 
Sheppey. These fossils are exceedingly 
numerous and varied^ and the fruits obtained 
from the single locality just alluded to, in¬ 
clude several hundred species, all of which 
are different from existing and known 
plants, although many of them seem closely 
allied to generic forms now met with in 
warnier climates than those at present 
characterising similar latitudes. There is 
indeed, nothing in these plants which re¬ 
moves them at once and in a marked man¬ 
ner from the existing type; and the most 
remarkable fact concerning them as a group 
is the preponderance of species allied to the 
palms, some of them being apparently inter¬ 
mediate between the cocoa-nut and the 
pandanus, or screw pine well known, and 
common tropical })lants not met with now 
in northern latitudes. The recent analogies 
of another genus the family of Nipae, inhabit 
the Spice Islands and Japan, and chiefly in 
low damp or marshy tracts, at the mouths 
of great rivers, especially in brackish water. 
Associated with these are some varieties of 
