II.—On Two Undescribed Coniferous Fruits from the Secondary Rocks of Britain

Abstract

It is a singular coincidence that in a former communication to this Magazine (Vol. VI., p. 1) I described, among other Coniferous fruits, two from the Gault at Folkestone, the one the cone of a pine, and the other of a Wellingtonia, and that in this communication I propose to describe two hitherto unknown fruits from the same deposit and found at the same locality, belonging also the one to a Wellingtonia and the other to a pine. Although the small pinecone already described (Pinites gracilis) differs in form and in the arrangement of the scales from any known cone, recent or fossil, it is more nearly related to that group of the section Pinea, the members of which are now associated with the Wellingtonias in the west of North America, than with any other member of the great genus Pinus. I, however, hesitated to refer to this interesting fact, because the occurrence of the two cones in the Gault might have been due to their being accidentally brought into the same silt by rivers having widely separated drainage areas. And it is easier to keep back generalizations based on imperfect data, than to suppress them after publication, when in the progress of investigation they are shown to be false. But I have now to describe a second pinecone more closely related to the Californian species of Pinea, and with it a new species of Wellingtonia. These surely point with tolerable certainty to the existence of a Coniferous vegetation on the high lands of the Upper Cretaceous period having a fades similar to that now existing in the mountains on the west of North America, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of latitude. No fossil referable to Sequoia has hitherto been found in strata older than the Gault, and here on the first appearance of the genus we find it associated with pines of the same group that now flourish by its side in the New World.