CHAP, iv.] THE PLEIOCENE FLORA. 



Pleiocene Flora. 



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The vegetation of central and southern France, and of 

 northern Italy in the Pleiocene age, is intermediate in 

 character between the wonderful evergreen flora of the 

 Meiocene and that now living in southern Europe ; and, 

 like the former, it is composed of plants, some of which 

 are found only in widely remote districts, such as Japan, 

 North America, Madeira, and the Canaries. The recent 

 investigations of the Count de Saporta 1 into the flora 

 of Meximieux show that the forests which covered the 

 neighbourhood of Lyons comprised bamboos, liquid- 

 ambars, rose-laurels, tulip -trees, large-leaved maples, 

 ilices, and glyptostrobi, together with magnolias, poplars, 

 willows, and other familiar trees. There were no less 

 than five kinds of laurels, among which may be noted 

 the til and the vinatico, two trees growing in the forests 

 of the Canaries, and no longer living in Europe. The 

 forest composed by this vegetation was mainly evergreen, 

 and like that of the Canaries in luxuriance. 



This Pleiocene forest has been proved, by the re- 

 searches of M. Gaudin and the Marquis Strozzi, 2 to have 

 extended into the upper valley of the Arno, and to be 

 composed for the most part of the same trees as those 

 mentioned above. It probably occupied a region but 

 little removed above the sea -level in middle Europe, 

 since the Count de Saporta has shown that the Pleiocene 

 vegetation of Ceyssac in Cantal, which lies buried under 

 volcanic ash, is of a very different character, consisting, 



1 De Saporta, Recherches sur les Veye'taux Fossiles de Meximieux, 

 Archives du Museum, d'Histoire Nat. de Lyon. 4to, t. 1, 1875-6. 



2 Lyell's Student's Elements, 2d edit, p. 190. Gaudin and Strozzi, 

 Feuilles fossiles de la Toscane. Contributions d la Flore fossile Italienne. 



