The Flora of the Amboy Clays Volume 26 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: upper, and throughout the continent of Europe where the planta of the upper half of the Cretaceous system have been gathered. BOTANICAL, CHARACTER OF THE FLORA. In the present memoir, including fruits and flowers, 156 species of plants are described. Of these, one is apparently a seaweed (Chondrites flexuosus). Haiis mann-ia and Czekanowskia are of uncertain botanical affinities, and Baiera, of which, as of the others mentioned, we have one species, is probably a conifer. Leaving out these doubtful elements, we find that of ferns there are 8 species; of conifers, 17; of cycads, 5; and all the others are dicotyledonous angiosperms. Of these, as has been already mentioned, the botanical rank is high?as high, probably, as that of an indiscriminate selection from the same number of arborescent plants taken from the living flora of the State of New Jersey would be. Hereafter, when more material shall have been gathered and this more carefully and wisely studied, it is probable that some changes will be required in the botanical balance of this flora; but it is evident that no discoveries hereafter to be made will greatly change its aspects. Changes will be made in the genera enumerated, species will be united or broken up, and the addition of groups of plants from layers which have furnished us little or nothing will doubtless color the result; but we can hardly imagine that the conclusions here announced will be greatly modified. As we look over the subjoined list of plants it will be seen that among them there are no palms. This is in accordance with all the observations hitherto made elsewhere upon the flora of the Lower and Middle Cretaceous. Mr. Lesquereux has doubtfully announced the discovery of a palm (F tabellara? minima) in the Dakota group of the West (Cret. Flora,...