86 ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. 



rare, rendering it probable that there was little dry land near. 

 The remains are chiefly of ferns, conifers, and cycadeae, but in 

 the two former cases we have only cones and leaves. There 

 have been discovered many pieces of wood containing holes 

 drilled by the teredo, and thus showing that they have been 

 long drifted about in the ocean before being entombed at the 

 bottom. 



The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the 

 Ferruginous Sand formation, presents fossils generally identical 

 with those of Europe, not excepting the fragments of drilled 

 wood ; showing that, in this, as in earlier ages, there was a 

 parity of conditions for animal life over a vast tract of the 

 earth's surface. To European reptiles, the American formation 

 adds a gigantic one, styled the Saurodon, from the lizard-like 

 character of its teeth. 



We have seen that footsteps of birds have been announced 

 from America, in the new red sandstone. Some similar isolated 

 phenomena occur in the present formation. In the slate of 

 Glaris, in Switzerland, corresponding to the English gait in 

 the chalk formation, the remains of a bird have been found. 

 [It is further worthy of notice that, whilst no mammalian re- 

 mains have been found in the chalk beds, Professor Owen has 

 lately (1860) determined some vertebrae from the lower green- 

 sand near Cambridge being inferior to the chalk beds as 

 cetacean, implying that there now existed examples of the 

 natatorial forms of the mammalia in short, whales. 1 ] 



ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. MAMMALIA. 



ABUNDANT. 



THE chalk-beds are the highest which extend over a con- 

 siderable space ; but in hollows of these beds, comparatively 

 limited in extent, there have been formed series of strata 

 clays, limestones, marls, alternating to which the name of the 

 Tertiary formation has been applied. London and Paris alike 

 rest on basins of this formation, and another such basin extends 

 from near Winchester, under Southampton, and re-appears in 

 the Isle of Wight. A stripe of it passes along the east coast 

 of North America, from Massachusetts to Florida. It is also 

 found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blended with formations 



1 Owen. Art. Palaeontology, Encyc. Brit. 1859. 



