CHAP. xxii. FOSSILS OF OENINGHEN. 431 



Miocene Plants and Insects related to recent Species. 



Geologists were acquainted with about three hundred 

 species of marine shells from the ( Falunian ' strata on the 

 banks of the Loire, before they knew anything of the contem 

 porary insects and ' plants. At length, as if to warn us 

 against inferring from negative evidence the poverty of 

 any ancient set of strata in organic remains proper to the 

 land, a rich flora and entomological fauna was suddenly 

 revealed to us characteristic of Central Europe during the 

 Upper Miocene period. This result followed the determina 

 tion of the true position of the Oeninghen beds in Switzerland, 

 and of certain formations of f Brown Coal ' in Germany. 



Professor Heer, who has described nearly five hundred 

 species of fossil plants from Oeninghen, besides many more 

 from other Miocene localities in Switzerland,* estimates 

 the phenogamous species, which must have flourished in 

 Central Europe at that time, at 3,000, and the insects as 

 having been more numerous in the same proportion as they 

 now exceed the plants in all latitudes. This European 

 Miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of arbo 

 rescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic 

 types no longer associated together in any existing flora or 

 geographical province. Some genera, for example, which 

 are at present restricted to America, coexisted in Switzer 

 land with forms now peculiar to Asia, and with others at 

 present confined to Australia. 



Professor Heer has not ventured to identify any of this 

 vast assemblage of Miocene plants and insects with living 

 species, so far at least as to assign to them the same specific 

 names, but he presents us with a list of what he terms 



* Heer, Flora tertiana Helvetise, 1859 ; and Gaudin's French translation, 

 with additions, 1861. 



