Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/54

26 Flabellaria, Nipadites), the last of which is now represented only by the Nipa fruticans of the banks of rivers in India and the Philippines. There were cypresses (Solenostrobus, Frenelites, Callitritis) also allied to genera living in Tasmania, and proteaceous plants allied to the banksia, maples, poplars, and mimosas, as well as custard apples, gourds, and melons, and ferns closely related to the living Osmunda regalis. This luxuriant and tropical vegetation has been proved by the recent discoveries of Mr. Starkie Gardner, in the Pre-nummulitic deposits at Newhaven, to have flourished in the British area, and not to have been swept down, as was formerly supposed, by a river flowing from a tropical region far away to the south. In the London Clay of Sheppey it is represented mainly by fossil fruits, in the strata at Newhaven principally by leaves which show no sign of having been conveyed long distances by water.

The earliest Eocene mammals found in Britain consist of marsupials and a creature belonging to an extinct family of the odd-toed (Perissodactyle) sub-order of Herbivores. The opossum (Didelphys Colchesteri) is to be looked upon as a survival from the Secondary fauna, and the Hyracotherium, a small animal with a skull the size of that of a hare, canine teeth resembling those