Reflections on Primitive Vegetation. 11 



vegetable world a very different aspect from that, which, till 

 then, it had always presented. This class of Dicotyledonous 

 plants, some traces of which we can, though with difficulty, 

 detect in the latter part of the secondary period, suddenly 

 presents itself during the tertiary period, in great preponder- 

 ance. As in the present day it surpasses all the other classes 

 of the vegetable kingdom, both in the number and variety of 

 its species, and in the size of individual plants. Thus, the 

 vegetation which flourished in our countries, while the ter- 

 tiary strata were being deposited, and enveloping its fragments 

 in sedimentary beds, was more nearly allied to that now ex- 

 isting, and more particularly to the botany of the temperate 

 regions of Europe and America. The face of these countries 

 was then covered, as it is now, with pines, firs, poplars, elms, 

 birches, walnuts, maples, and other trees allied to those which 

 which still flourish in our climates. 



Thus, not only do we find there no traces of those singular 

 vegetables which characterised the primitive forests of the 

 coal period, but we very rarely meet with fragments of such 

 plants as are analogous to those now existing within the tropics. 



We are not, however, to imagine, that the same vegetable 

 forms have been perpetuated from an epoch still very remote, 

 since it preceded the existence of man, until our own day. — 

 No ; very marked differences almost always distinguish these 

 inhabitants of our globe, (in a geological sense, very recent, 

 though chronologically, of great antiquity), from the modern 

 vegetables, by the side of which we might class them. And 

 the existence in these very strata, towards the north of France, 

 of some palms, very different from those which still grow on 

 the shores of the Mediterranean sea, and of a number of other 

 plants which belong to families now confined to warmer re- 

 gions, seems to indicate that at this epoch, central Europe 

 enjoyed a much more elevated temperature than at present; a 

 result which perfectly agrees with that deduced from the pre- 

 sence, in the same strata, and in the same countries, of ele- 

 phants, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, animals which now 

 seldom extend beyond the tropics. 



What an astonishing contrast between the aspect of nature, 

 during these later geological periods, and that which it offered 

 when the primitive vegetation covered the surface of this 

 globe ! 



In fact, in these latter times of the geological history of the 

 world, the earth had assumed, in great part at least, the ap- 

 pearance which it retains at the present day ; extensive con- 

 tinents, and mountains, already of considerable height, must 

 have caused a variety of climates, and thus favoured the di- 



