THE LITTLE MISSOURI BAD LANDS. 



641 



sides, the strata have evidently never been disturbed in such a way as 

 to afford any great variety of altitude in this locality. We are there- 

 fore shut up to the conclusion that, at the time these leaves were green, 

 a climate prevailed very different from any now known in the same 

 latitude anywhere in North America. 

 The climate must have been warm and / \ 



equable. Indeed, that the climate, not / \ 



of Dakota only, but of the whole north- / \ 



ern hemisphere, was at one time far / \ 



milder than now seems proved, for leaves 

 such as these of which we speak have 

 been found in Greenland and many 

 other circumpolar lands. What may 

 have been the prime cause of this former 

 high temperature in high latitudes we 

 leave students of physical geography and 

 surface geology to decide, but we may 

 say this : the warm and equable climates 

 of the world are maritime, or character- 

 istic of islands, as the climate of Italy or 

 the Grecian Archipelago. That a large 

 body of fresh water may work wonders 

 in temperature and amount of moisture, 

 is to us a familiar fact witnessed by the 

 climate of the peninsula of Michigan. 

 And so, to meet the requisite climatic conditions suggested by these 

 few leaves, we are ready to accept without doubt the statements of 

 men who from their study of the topography of the Bad Lands de- 

 clare the whole region to have been, perhaps again and again, the 

 bed of a wide-spread inland lake or sea. On the shores and islands 

 of this Mediterranean of the Western world stood the forests pri- 

 meval whose foliage has come down to us like the sad memory of 

 better days. 



As one looks upon these fairly outlined relics of a long-forgotten 

 age, he may catch glimpses of landscapes in presence of which all the 

 bleakness and barrenness of the present disappear. Instead of sterile 

 hills and buttes, far stretches the quiet sea, unvexed by storms, but filled 

 with happy islands like the " Islands of the Blest." Over the islands 

 the laurel blooms, abundant fig-trees spread their dense and shining 

 foliage, and send down aerial roots in thickets impenetrable. Along 

 the curving shores the bending willows sweep the water's surface, 

 while hard by stands the broad-leaved plane-tree and the feathery elm, 

 and farther back the hazel and its kindred oak. The poplar shakes its 

 shining leaves and fills the air with fragrance. Over the cornel and 

 the hornbeam creeps the vine, and high above all, walling the horizon 

 like the cryptomeria in the forests of Japan, sequoias, magnificent se- 



FlG. 12. COKNTS RHAMNIFOLIA (O. 



Weber). 



VOL. XXIII.- 



