MAN AND JSTATUEE. 263 



corresponding in some sort with the kindred series of 

 animal life ; but more distinctly marked by the char- 

 acters which changes of climate have impressed upon 

 these wonderful records of ages gone by. The peculiar 

 and profuse vegetation, the gigantic ferns and lycopo- 

 diacere of the coal formation, belong to a climate hotter 

 than that to which their products now so abundantly 

 minister light and heat. In the fossil flora of the 

 tertiary strata we find ourselves more closely approach- 

 ing to that of our own time, in the proportions as well 

 as in the families and species of the vegetable world. 

 Though forced to admit a long interval of time and 

 change, including the so-called glacial period, between 

 the newest of the Pleiocene strata and the human 

 epoch, we have reason to believe that this approach to 

 existing vegetation still went on, and that the earliest 

 of our race found the earth clothed with trees and 

 herbs not greatly differing in kind from those which 

 now cover its surface. It is probable, from various 

 considerations, that the forests of this period were very 

 widely extended, and that the Conifers especially 

 formed a large proportion of this forest growth. We 

 may remark, as worthy of note here, that in the peat- 

 mosses of Denmark (which show in succession down- 

 wards the vestiges of the Iron, Bronze, and Stone Ages 

 of human implements, and thence inferentially the 

 succession of different races of men) the lower or 

 Stone stratum abounds in trunks of the pine and fir 

 only ; while those of the oak are largely found in the 

 Bronze period, and of the beech (now the predominant 

 tree of the country) in the Iron. 



