9® M. Df CandoUe on Fossil Vegetables. 



to this formation, in which some fossil vegetables are found, as 

 at Aix in Provence, at Paris, and elsewhere. 



They are analogous to those of the brown coals or lignites as to 

 genera, but they differ as to species. They are all terrestrial. 



Of seventeen species enumerated by Brongniart, there is one 

 moss, an equisetum, a fern, two chara, a lihaceae, a palm, two 

 coniferse, and many amentacese. 



Twelfth Epoch — Upper Marine Formation. — But very few 

 vegetable fossils have been found in this formation, which forms 

 certain sub-apennine hills. They are also in a very injured 

 condition. There is one nut, which is very common-on the hill 

 in the neighbourhood of Turin (Juglans nux taurinensis.) It 

 is always detached from the plant, and without doubt, floated 

 into the neighbouring waters. 



Thirteenth Epoch — Upper Lacustrine Forinatioyi. — The 

 millstone of Montmorency contains five or six difl'erent plants, 

 which all appear to be aquatic, and analogous to those which 

 still grow in shallow ponds. The frequency of chara, and the 

 presence of a nymphaea, give evidence of the formation of a de- 

 posit, in which the waters were shallow. 



Fourteenth Epoch — Formation contemporaneous with the pre- 

 sent living Vegetables. — Beds of peat are still forming under our 

 eyes, and contain solely the debris of vegetable species which still 

 exist in the same regions. In Scotland, where this formation is 

 still forming very rapidly, seeds of chara occur preserved in the 

 peat, exactly as in some of the anterior formations. The lig- 

 nites are only peats of an earlier epoch. 



The point of transition between the peats and the antedilu- 

 vian deposits, is of the greatest importance in natural history, 

 since it is there we find the change from actual living species to 

 forms of an earlier date. 



IV. Respecting the Alliances among the Vegetables op 



THE different ReGIONS AT EACH EpOCH. 



The question naturally suggests itself — Whether at each 

 geological epoch the same species, genera and fiimilies of vege- 



