NIPADITES OF BELGIUM.
The Nipadites of Brussels have recently been brought under the more immediate notice of English geologists, in a memoir "On the Tertiary Strata of Belgium and French Flanders," by Sir Charles Lyell, in which several specimens are figured and described.[165] These fossils are found in sands and sandstone, presumed to be of the age of the Bracklesham beds of Sussex. They are procured from Schaerbeek, in the northern suburbs of Brussels, where extensive quarries are worked for paving-stones, and have long been celebrated for remains of turtles, trunks of palms, and dicotyledonous trees, and the fruits, now called Nipadites. The vegetable remains often occur silicified; Sir C. Lyell was shown by the workmen "the trunk of a petrified exogenous tree, with forty rings of annual growth; it had lain in a horizontal position, and was bored by teredinæ. The silicified base of the trunk of a Palm-tree, apparently broken off short at about the level of the soil, had numerous air-roots, or rootlets, attached."[166]
[165] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. viii. August 1852.
[166] "On the Belgian Tertiary Formations," Geol. Journal, vol. viii, p. 344.
Of the thirteen species of Nipadites enumerated by Mr. Bowerbank, some of which are, however, only accidental varieties, four have been identified among those obtained from Schaerbeek: two of them belong to but one species—the Nipadites Burtoni: the others are N. lanceolata ([Lign. 63, fig. 9]), and N. Parkinsoni (Pictorial Atlas, plate vii.). These fossil nuts closely resemble the fruit of Nipas fruticans, a palm which abounds in the delta of the Ganges, and other parts of Bengal, and is the only living species of the genus known.[167] In an immature or abortive specimen of Nipadites giganteus (of Bowerbank), figured in Geol. Journ. pl. xix. fig. 2, the angularity of the pericarp observable in the ripe fruit ([Lign. 63. fig. 9]) is well marked. The largest specimen of Nipadites from Schaerbeek, is above seven inches long and four wide. The arenaceous strata containing these fruits, and stems of palms and dicotyledonous trees, are supposed to have been formed in the sea near the mouth of a river, as in the case of the clay-beds at Sheppey: the vegetable remains are associated with bones of fresh-water Turtles, teeth of Sharks, cases and spines of Echinoderms, and shells of the genera Ostrea, Pinna, &c.[168]
[167] "On the Belgian Tertiary Formations," Geol. Journal, vol. viii. p. 344.
[168] Geol. Journal, vol. viii. p. 347.
FOSSIL PANDANUS.
Fossil Fruit of Pandanus. (Popocarya. Bd. pl. lxii. p. 503.)—The Pandanaceæ are monocotyledonous trees, named Screw Pines from the spiral insertion of their long, rigid, sword-like leaves, along the stem; they are natives of hot climates, and abound in the groups of islands in the Pacific; being generally the first important vegetable tenants of the newly-formed Atols or coral-islands. As in the palms, the stem is supported near the base by long side-roots, which enable these trees to maintain an erect position, and flourish on the newly-elevated coral-reefs, where but little soil has accumulated.