The Geological History of the Genus Stratiotes : an Account of the Evolutionary Changes which have occurred within the Genus during Tertiary and Quaternary Times

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Abstract
Stratiotes aloides , the Water-Soldier or Water-Aloe, is a well-known monotypic European and Siberian plant of the Monocotyledonous family Hydrocharitaceæ; palæontological studies of recent years have shown this plant to be the sole survivor of an ancient genus which was living far back in the Tertiary Era. II. H history of P alæobotanical I nvestigation . The principal land-marks in the palæobotanical study of Stratiotes are as follows:— 1, 1822. The description of Carpolithes thalictroides Adolphe Brongniart; var. parisiensis (Paris Basin); var. websteri (Newport, Isle of Wight) (2). 2, 1833. Description of a second species, Folliculites kalten-nordheimensis Zenker, and the suggestion that Brongniart's fossils belonged to this genus (7). 3, 1892. Description of a third species, Paradoxocarpus carinatus Nehring, from Pleistocene beds (33). 4, 1892, later. Recognition that Nehring's Paradoxocarpus was a species of Folliculites of Zenker, by Potonié (36). 5, 1896. Identification of Folliculites as Stratiotes by Keilhack (54, 56), F. carinatus being synonymous with S. aloides Linn. and F. kaltennordheimensis being an extinct species. Apart from these points, the whole literature of the subject is a mass of controversy. The confusion has been increased by the fact that S. websteri and F. kaltennordheimensis had been inadequately figured and described; while, owing presumably to a strong generic resemblance, shown by the figures (which failed, nevertheless, to make clear the specific distinctness), the two names were frequently used as synonyms. The disorder occasioned could not be cleared up by an appeal to type-specimens, for, in the case of Stratiotes websteri , these, and the type-locality too, were lost. Moreover, other species

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