CHAPTER XI. 



THE NEOZOIC AGES — (continued). 



Plant-life in the Tertiary approaches very nearly to 

 that of the Modern World, in so far as its leading 

 types are concerned ; but in its distribution geographi- 

 cally it was wonderfully different from that with which 

 we are at present familiar. For example, in the Isle 

 of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, are beds of 

 '^ London clay/' full of fossil nuts ; and these, instead 

 of -"being hazel nuts and acorns, belong to palms allied 

 to species now found in the Philippine Islands and 

 Bengal, while with them are numerous cone-like fruits 

 belonging to the ProteaccEe (banksias, silver- trees, 

 wagenbooms, etc.), a group of trees now confined to 

 Australia and South Africa, but which in the Northern 

 Hemisphere had already, as stated in a previous paper, 

 made their appearance in the Cretaceous, and were 

 abundant in the Eocene. The state of preservation 

 of these fruits shows that they were not drifted far ; 

 and in some beds in Hampshire, also of Eocene age, 

 the leaves of similar plants occur along with species of 

 fig, cinnamon, and other forms equally Australian or 

 Indian. In America, especially in the west, there are 

 thick and widely-distributed beds of lignite or imper- 

 fect coal of the Eocene period; but the plants found 



