19 ANNUAL RECOED OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



mountains, and remarks that the snow banks of Mounts Lyell 

 and M'Clure, of the Yosemite region, are true glaciers, as 

 shown by the forward movement of stakes planted by him 

 across the bank. The central stakes were found to move 

 forty inches in forty-six days, while the surroundings exhibit 

 all the peculiarities of glaciers in the form of moraines, etc. 

 The Mount M'Clure glacier is about half a mile in length, 

 and of the same breadth in the broadest part, and the Mount 

 Lyell glacier is about a mile long. 4 D^ January^ 1873, 69. 



FLORA OF THE PLIOCENE OF CENTEAL FEANCE. 



M. De Saporta has presented to the Academy of Sciences 

 of Paris a very interesting communication upon the remains 

 of plants and their foliage found buried under the erujDtive 

 ashes of an ancient volcano at Cantal, in France, during the 

 pliocene epoch. According to Mr. Rames, who has made a 

 special study of the geology of Cantal, the country had but 

 a slight undulation down to the miocene period, its surface 

 then being covered with lakes. At this epoch occurred the 

 first basaltic erui^tions, which are covered by the upper mio- 

 cene, with its remains oi AmpMcyon^ Macliairodus^ Mastodon 

 migustidens^ Dmotheriuni giga^itemn^ Hipparion^ etc. 



Subsequently to this the relief of the land became more 

 decided, and a soil was developed along the flanks of the new 

 volcano, in which, during a long period of repose, the vege- 

 tation referred to in the communication was established. 

 Afterward, however, a violent eruption occurred, accompa- 

 nied by a shower of ashes mixed with water, and followed 

 by avalanches of mud, which buried or destroyed the forests, 

 and covered up the leaves which littered the soil, the trunks 

 of the trees themselves sometimes being left erect, and some- 

 times prostrated. 



It is thought that careful study of this fossil flora will 

 throw light not only upon the contemporaneous vegetation 

 during the epoch in question in difierent parts of the world, 

 but also upon the mode of the origin of the sj^ecies belonging 

 to the present period. A striking fact is the collocation in 

 these deposits of forms now belonging to the Canary Islands 

 and the Mediterranean, side by side with those of Central 

 Europe, the Caucasus, and North America. Species yet ex- 

 isting in Central Europe are also found but little changed, 



