EARLY TERTIARIES. 155 



we have every type and feature of existing vitality; and 

 the character of the period will perhaps be better indicated 

 by a notice of the forms that have become extinct, than by 

 any description of the whole, which still constitutes in a 

 great measure the flora and fauna now flourishing around us. 



Separating the early tertiaries the eocene and miocene 

 from the pliocene and pleistocene, when, under the chang- 

 ing conditions of sea and land, the climate of the northern 

 hemisphere began to assume a boreal character ; we shall 

 shortly glance at the more marked and peculiar aspects of 

 this early period. Wherever we turn whether to the clays 

 and gravels of the London basin, or to the marls and gyp- 

 sums of Paris, whether we restrict our review to the south 

 of Europe, or carry it forward to the centre of Asia we 

 everywhere find in these earlier tertiaries abundant evi- 

 dence of a warm - temperate, or even subtropical flora. 

 Palm-like leaves and fruits, such as now flourish on the 

 mud-islands of the Ganges (flabellaria, nipadites, tricarpel- 

 lites), leguminous seeds of arboreal growth (legumenosites), 

 twigs and leaves of mimosa, laurel, and other plants, whose 

 congeners now find a habitat in southern latitudes, are 

 thickly scattered through these strata. Nor are these the 

 mere twigs and fragments of tropical forests, drifted from 

 afar by gigantic rivers ; for associated with the formation 

 are beds of lignite or wood-coal, composed of kindred plants 

 that must have flourished for centuries on the spots where 

 their remains are now entombed. 



And even if the flora gave no certain evidence of the 

 geniality of the climate that then pervaded the parallels of 

 London and Paris, the associated fauna would of itself 

 establish the belief. Gigantic sharks and rays (lamna, 

 carckarodoH, myliobatis\ such as now frequent the Southern 

 Ocean, crocodiles and turtles (crocodilus, clielone, emys) in 

 greater specific exuberance than is now known to the zoolo- 



