On some Minute Seed-vessels ( Carpolithes ovulum Brongniart), from the Eocene beds of Lewisham

Abstract

Of this remarkable and beautiful little fossil three or four specimens have been detected in the Eocene clays of Lewisham, by the late Rev. H. de la Condamine, and one of them in so perfect a state that I have had little difficulty in making out the details of its structure. They occurred associated with freshwater shells in the “ Planorbis bed” at Counter Hill, and are alluded to in Mr. Prestwich9s valuable memoir on the “Woolwich and Reading Series” of the London Tertiaries, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. x. pp. 119 and 156 (see also Pl. 3. fig. 4). A few other vegetable remains were found associated in the same bed with this Carpolithes , but none that throw any light upon its affinities. Amongst these are two kinds of Dicotyledonous leaves, together with the pinnm of a Fern not differing in venation from the existing genus Asplenium *, and the remains of Monocotyledonous leaves. To the same formation, however, Mr. Prestwich has referred some fragments of couiferous and other Dicotyledonous woods, and a Fir-cone, referable apparently to the existing genus Abies†. Dr. Mantell also, in his ‘Geology of Sussex,’ has figured some vegetable remains alluded to by Mr. Prestwich as apparently agreeing with some of the Reading species, of which latter a beautiful series of forms, chiefly of leaves of Dicotyledonous trees, are given at P1. 4 accompanying the Memoir before mentioned‡. The whole assemblage appears to indicate that the climate of the period during which they flourished did not materially