252 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Of the twelve genera represented in the specimens before
us, three are still widely distributed in the northern hemisphere.
Pines, spruces and firs of many species are abundant in Europe,
in many parts of Asia and in North America. Cypresses are
so widely cultivated throughout Europe that one may easily
forget that one species only is native there, namely, the tall
Mediterranean Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens), familiar in
landscapes in Italy and the South of France, where it is
often planted as a wind-screen ; its home is in the eastern
Mediterranean region.
Four of the genera, on the other hand, are restricted now to
very limited areas, and are represented by either one or very
few species ; formerly, however, they had a far wider range.
The Umbrella Pine of Japan (Sciadopitys verticillata) is now
confined in the wild state to certain sheltered and rocky mountain
valleys in the island of Hondo, Japan. Its long narrow leaves
resemble those of a pine in a general way, but closer examination
shows that each 'needle' is double and formed apparently by
the union of two leaves. In a bed of Early Pliocene age in the
valley of the river Main, near Frankfort, Germany, these peculiar
double-needles of the Umbrella Pine have been found associated
with the needles of the Weymouth Pine, Pinus Strobus, now
wild only in Eastern North America ; also with the leaves of
a Sequoia and of the Ginkgo or Maidenhair tree ; the last is now
found wild in Japan only, if indeed it still exists away from
cultivation. Then, too, in older Cretaceous beds of Western
Greenland, in some places the rock surface has been found covered
with innumerable fossil needle-like leaves shed by ancient forest
trees ; these again have the 'double' structure characteristic
of the Sciadopitys family, "a family which may have reached
"its maximum in the early part of the Cretaceous period, and
"which is now represented by a single survivor far distant from
"Greenland."
The genus Sequoia, of which only two species survive, the
Big-wood and the Red-wood, those grand and lofty giants of
California, was nearly cosmopolitan in early Tertiary times.
Remains of the Redwood have been found in Alaska, Chili,
Manchuria and Japan, and in the British Isles in the Isle of
Mull and in the Bovey Tracy beds of Devonshire. Remains of
Sequoia have also been found in the Cretaceous beds of Green-