in trees from the Carboniferous series of Britain.[1] That of ordinary Pines occurs in wood from the Coal formation of Nova Scotia and New Holland.
The same ordinary structure of Pines predominates in the fossil wood of the Lias at Whitby; trunks of Araucarias also are found there in the same Lias; and branches, with the leaves still adhering to them, in the Lias at Lyme Regis.[2]
Professor Lindley justly remarks that it is an important fact, that at the period of the deposite of the Lias, the vegetation was similar to that of the Southern Hemisphere, not alone in the single fact of the presence of Cycadeæ, but that the Pines were also of the nature of species now found only to the south of the Equator. Of the four recent species of Araucaria at present known, one is found on the east coast of New Holland, another in Norfolk Island, a third in Brazil, and the fourth in Chili. (Foss. Flora, vol. ii. p. 21.)
Whatever result may follow from future investigations, our present information shows that the largest and most perfect fossil Coniferæ, which have been as yet sufficiently examined from the Coal formation and the Lias, are referable either to the genus Pinus, or Araucaria,[3] and that both
- ↑ A trunk of Araucaria forty-seven feet long was found in Cragleith Quarry near Edinburgh, 1830. (Sec Witham's Fossil Vegetables, 1833, Pl. 5.) Another, three feet in diameter, and more than twenty-four feet long, was discovered in the same quarries in 1833. (See Nicol on Fossil Coniferæ, Edin. New Phil. Journal, Jan., 1834.) The longitudinal sections of this Tree exhibit, like the recent Araucaria excelsa, small polygonal discs, arranged in double, and triple and quadruple rows within the longitudinal vessels; so also does a similar section from the Coal-field of New-Holland.
- ↑ See Lindley and Hutton's Fossil Flora, Pl. 88. A fossil cone referable to Coniferæ, and possibly to the genus Araucaris, from the Lias of Lyme Regis, is represented at Plate 89 of the same work.
- ↑ Mr. Nicol states that in fossil woods from the Whitby Lias, when concentric layers are distinctly marked on their transverse section, (Pl. 56a, Fig. 2, a, a) the longitudinal sections have also the structure of Pinus (Pl. 56a, Fig. 1.;) but when the transverse section exhibits no distinct annual layers, (Pl. 562, Fig. 4.) or has them but slightly indicated,
