GIANTS AND PIGMIES. 



4» 



was first sketched. The conclusion arrived at was that there 

 '/ns no great deveJopment of grasses until the close of the 

 Kocene, Avhile the Miocene beds nil over Europe arc crowded 

 with them, page 574. Tins surely corresponds with the order 

 of the Biblical Record, Gen. i., verses 11 and 12: Let the 

 Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, &c. We are 

 again in Paris. Its Eocene formation is now becoming familiar 

 to us. We would now examine the high places of communism 

 in the North of Paris — Buttes Montmartre, Buttes Chaumont 

 and Pere la Chaise. Hero we have, in the last, t Necropolis of 

 the present ; in the first a Necropolis of the past, and in the 

 middle a place which was once notorious for its ugliness, with 

 its excavations, the dens of robbers and haunts of vice. In 

 Pere la Chaise lie entombed the mightiest and the lowliest of 

 " la Belle France." Montmartre is celebrated as the tomb of 

 Earth's earliest mammals. Buttes Chaumont is now remark- 

 able for beauty and grandeur. Its heights and Hollows, its 

 grottoes loAv and lofty, the latter with their ceilings adorned 

 with great stalactites and refreshed in summer heat with 

 artificial waterfalls, its serpentine streams and tortuous path- 

 ways, contribute to form one of the most attractive resorts of 

 pleasure-seekers and tourists. The same Geological formation, 

 middle Eocene, nearly comprehent's all the three. Pere la 

 Chaise in its newly opened graved reveals beds of gypsum 

 marls. The cliffs and rocks of Buttes Chaumont are formed 

 largely of limestones with Calcaires de Brie. Gypseous marls, 

 clays and gypsum constitute the heights of Montmartr*^ '^apped 

 with Sables de Fontainebleau of Lower Miocene age. 

 Beaumont's elevation of the Isle of AVight, Montmartre, &c., 

 Rcems to correspond with that of Lebanon, according to 

 Schumacher. The Isle of Wight, Montmartre and Lebanon 

 would be simultaneously clothed with grass, <fec., according to 

 Starkie Gardner's observations. We will have occasion to 

 make further remarks on Eocene and Miocene vegetation, in 

 the sequel. 



28. Wo are at the foot of Montmartre — making a recon- 

 naissance of it. It appears smooth, comparatively, all round. 



