Lign. 64. Fossil Fruits from the Isle of Sheppey. London Clay.
| Fig. | 1 and 2.— | Zulinosprionites latus. 2. A section, showing the receptacles for two seeds.—2/3 nat. |
| 3.— | Leguminosites dimidiatus; side view.—1/2 nat. | |
| 4.— | Leguminosites subquadrangularis; side view.—1/2 nat. | |
| 5.— | Cupanoides lobatus.—1/2 nat. | |
| 6.— | Cucumites variabilis.—1/2 nat. | |
| 7.— | Mimosites Browniana; from Ossington, Suffolk. A seed-pod of an Acacia, or other plant of the Mimosa family.—2/3 nat. |
Nipadites. [Lign. 63]. (Pict. Atlas, pl. vi. vii.)—The most remarkable fruits in the above catalogue are those which, from their appearance when compressed, are known to collectors by the name of "petrified figs" ([Lign. 63, fig. 9, 10]). Some specimens attain a considerable size, and are from five to seven inches long. The nut, and the pericarp or shell, are often well preserved. These fossils were referred to the Cocos by Mr. Parkinson, but they have not a ligneous endocarp with three pores as in the Cocoa-nut.
Mr. Bowerbank has shown that they are nearly related to the fruit of the Nipa, or Molucca-Palm, a tree which abounds in Bengal, and in the Molucca and Philippine Islands. The Nipæ are low, shrub-like plants, having the general aspect of palms; they grow in marshy tracts, at the mouths of great rivers, particularly where the waters are brackish. They are allied to the Cocoa-nut tribe, on the one hand, and to the Pandanus, or Screw-pine, on the other.
The Nipadites, according to Mr. Bowerbank, have the epicarp and endocarp thin and membranous, and the sarcocarp thick and pulpy, and composed of cellular tissue, through which run numerous bundles of vessels. Nearly in the centre of the pericarp is situated a large seed which, when broken, is more or less hollow. This seed consists of regular layers of cells, radiating from a spot situated near the middle, and apparently inclosing a central embryo.
The same author remarks, that "if the habits of the plants to which the fossil fruits belonged were similar to those of the recent Nipa, it will account for their abundance in the London Clay in the Isle of Sheppey; which formation, from the great variety of stems and branches, mixed up with star-fishes, shells of mollusks, and bones of fishes, crustaceans, and reptiles of numerous marine and fresh-water genera, is strikingly characteristic of the delta of a river, which probably flowed from near the Equator towards the spot where these interesting relics are deposited." The fact that the seed-vessels of several species of Nipadites abound in the Isle of Sheppey, and have not been observed in any other locality in England, tends to support this opinion.
Carpolithes of this kind occur in great perfection in the Eocene strata of Belgium, and were figured and described, nearly seventy years since, in Burton's "Oryctographie de Bruxelles," as petrified cocoa-nuts; the uncompressed state in which these fossils occur makes the resemblance to the recent fruit more striking than in the flattened pyritous specimens from the clay of Sheppey.