The association of palms and Coniferae, which we have indicated as being characteristic of the coal formations, is discoverable throughout almost all formations to the tertiary period. In the present condition of the world, these genera p 282 appear to exhibit no tendency whatever to occur associated together. We have so accustomed ourselves, although erroneously, to regard Coniferae as a northern form, that I experienced a feeling of surprise when, in ascending from the shores of the South Pacific toward Chilpansingo and the elevated valleys of Mexico, between the 'Venta de la Moxonera' and the 'Alto de los Caxones', 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I rode a whole day through a dense wood of Pinus occidentalis, where I observed that these trees, which are so similar to the Weymouth pine, were associated with fan palms* ('Corypha dulcis'), swarming with brightly-colored parrots.
[footnote] *This corypha is the 'soyate' (in Aztec, zoyatl), or the 'Palma dulce' of the natives. See Humboldt and Bonplaud, 'Synopsis Plant. AEquinoct. Orbis Novi', t. i., p. 302. Professor Buschmann, who is profoundly acquainted with the American languages, remarks, that the 'Palma soyate' is so named in Yepe's 'Vocabulario de la Lengua Othomi', and that the Aztec word zoyatl (Molina, 'Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana y Castellana', p. 25) recurs in names of places, such as Zoyatitlan and Zoyapanco, near Chiapa.
South America has oaks, but not a single species of pine; and the first time that I again saw the familiar form of a fir-tree, it was thus associated with the strange appearance of the fan palm.*
[footnote] *Near Baracoa and Cayos de Moya. See the Admiral's journal of the 25th and 27th of November, 1492, and Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de l'Hist. de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent', t. ii., p. 252, and 5. iii., p. 23. Columbus, who invariably paid the most remarkable attention to all natural objects, was the first to observe the difference between 'Podocarpus' and 'Pinus'. "I find," said he, "en la tierra aspera del Cibao pinos que no Ilevan pinas (fir cones), pero portal orden compuestos por naturaleza, que (los frutos) parecen azeytunas del Axarafe de Sevilla." The great botanist, Richard, when he published his excellent Memoir on Cycadeae and Coniferae, little imagined that before the time of L'Heritier, and even before the end of the fifteenth century, a navigator had separated 'Podocarpus' from the Abietineae.
Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage of discovery, saw Coniferae and palms growing together on the northeastern extremity of the island of Cuba, likewise within the tropics, and scarcely above the level of the sea. This acute observer, whom nothing escaped, mentions the fact in his journal as a remarkable circumstance, and his friend Anghiera, the secretary of Frdinand the Catholic, remarks with astonishment "that 'palmeta' and 'pineta' are found associated together in the newly-discovered land." It is a matter of much importance to geology to compare the present distribution of plants over the earth's surface with that exhibited in the fossil floras of the primitive world. The temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, which is so rich in seas and islands, and where p 283 tropical forms blend so remarkably with those of colder parts of the earth, presents according to Darwin's beautiful and animated descriptions,* the most instructive materials for the study of the present and the past geography of plants.
[footnote] *Charles Darwin, 'Journal of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle', 1839, p. 271.
The history of the primordial ages is, in the strict sense of the word, a part of the history of plants.
Cycadeae, which, from the number of their fossil species, must have occupied a far more important part in the extinct than in the present vegetable world, are associated with the nearly allied Coniferae from the coal formations upward. They are almost wholly absent in the epoch of the variegated sandstone which contains Coniferae of rare and luxuriant structure ('Voltizia, Haidingera, Albertia'); the Cycadeae, however, occur most frequently in the keuper and lias strata, in which more than twenty different forms appear. In the chalk, marine plants and naiades predominate. The forests of Cycadeae of the Jura formations had, therefore, long disappeared, and even in the more ancient tertiary formations they are quite subordinate to the Coniferae and palms.*
[footnote] *Goppert describes three other Cycadeae (species of Cycadites and Pterophyllum), found in the brown carboniferous schistose clay of Alt-sattel and Commotau, in Bohemia. They very probably belong to the Eocene Period. Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen', s. 61.
The lignites, or beds of brown coal* which are present in all divisions of the tertiary period, present, among the most ancient cryptogamic land plants, some few palms, many Coniferae having distinct annual rings, and foliaceous shrubs of a more or less tropical character.