Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/382

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This family of Plants seems destined, like the Cocoa nut Palm, to be among the first vegetable Colonists of new lands just emerging from the ocean; they are found together almost universally by navigators on the rising Coral islands of tropical seas. We have just been considering the history of the fossil.stems of Cycadeæ in the Isle of Portland, from which we learn that Plants of that now extra-European family were natives of Britain, during the period of the Oolite formation. The unique and beautiful fossil fruit represented in our figures (Plate 63, Figs. 2, 3, 4,) affords probable evidence of the existence of another tropical family nearly allied to the Pandaneæ at the commencement of the great Oolitic series in the Secondary formations.

In structure this fossil Fruit approaches nearer to Pandanus than to any other living plant, and viewing the peculiarities of the fruit of Pandaneæ in connexion with the office