15 
now frost bound Arctic regions, a fact which has been proved 
by the remarkable plant remains of temperate climes which 
have been recently discovered there. The Amber flora of the 
Baltic area under review, contains northern forms associated 
with plants of more temperate zones, and with others even 
which live in much more southern ones. Thus Camphor trees 
(Cinnamomum) occur with willows, birches, beech, and 
numerous oaks; a species of Thuya, very similiar to the 
American Thuya, occidentalis is the most abundant tree 
amongst the Conifors, next in abundance Widdringtonia, a 
great variety of Pines and Firs, including the Amber pine,* 
thousands of these it is supposed by the professor might 
already have perished, and while the wood decayed, the resin 
with which the stem and branches wereloaded might have been 
accumulated in large quantities, in bogs and lakes, in the soilof 
the forest. Ifthe coast at that time was gradually sinking, the 
sea would cover the land, in due course carry away the Amber 
and masses of vegetable detritus into the ocean, where it was 
deposited amidst the marine animals which inhabited it. But 
in higher districts the Amber pines would still flourish, and so 
Amber still continued to be washed into the sea and deposited 
in the later formed Green Sand, and still later overlying forma- 
tion of the ‘ Brown coal.’ In the Prussian district, now under 
consideration, this newer Tertiary formation consists of (1) clay 
(2) sand, and (3) brown coal, + No. 2 only contains Amber, 
not so abundantly as in the Amber earth, not in regular layers, 
but usually harder and therefore more valuable than the 
richer deposit below. The Brown Coal flora differs from the 
eS iT i 2 2 OR Sa a 
* Tt is stated by Berendt, that the wood, blossoms, fruit, and needle leaves of the 
Conifera have been detected in Amber, the latter very rarely, yet never 
corresponding with any existing trees, and although the leaves differ greatly from 
all known species, a microscopical examination of the wood, places it beyond all 
doubt that the Amber tree was a Pinus. The Pinus Balsamea approaches nearest 
to it in appearance, but the tree no longer exists. 
+ My friend Sir C. Lyell considers the ‘ Brown Coal’ of the Rhine, to belong to 
the newer Pliocene period, and probably all the Brown Coal elsewhere is of the 
same age, and if so, much newer than the Glauconite, which contains the earliest 
traces of Amber, 
