THE FIRST FORESTS OF MODERN TYPE. 187 



becomes somewhat diminished, but No. 4 continues with 

 unabated prevalence, so that the Mesozoic has sometimes 

 been characterised as emphatically the age of Gymnosperms. 

 With these appear some Endogcns, allied to the modern 

 Yuccas and Screw pines and Arums. But in the lower 

 Mesozoic rocks we have no representatives of the broad- 

 leaved Exogens (Angiosperms), which constitute the great 

 mass of ordinary forest vegetation ; and it is only in the 

 Cretaceous that we find them appearing in force, and that 

 the monotonous vegetation of the older style was replaced 

 by the more beautiful and varied forms of our modern woods. 



In Europe, in the lower part of the Uj^per Cretaceous ot 

 Bohemia {Cefwma?uan), have been found some leaves which 

 indicate the beginning of this change. These have been 

 referred to Caesalpinias or Brasilettos, pod-bearing trees of 

 India and tropical America, Aralias or Ginsengs, Magnolias, 

 Laurels, an Ivy, and a peculiar and uncertain genus {Credneria). 

 With these are noble palms, both of the types with pinnate 

 and palmate leaves, and trees allied to the Giant Sequoias of 

 California, and to the Araucarian pines of the southern hemi- 

 sphere. (See Frontispiece to this Chapter.) These ancient 

 Cretaceous forests of Eastern Europe are compared by Saporta 

 with those which now live in the warmer portions of China or 

 in South America — truly a marvellous change from the sombre 

 and uniform vegetation by which they seem to have been im- 

 mediately preceded. A still further development of modern 

 vegetation takes place in the next or highest member of 

 Cretaceous, the Maestricht beds (Senonian), where we find a 

 crowd of modern types. On this great change Count Saporta 

 remarks with truth that there seem to have been periods of 

 pause and of activity in the introduction of plants. The 

 Jurassic period was one of inactivity; and a new and 

 vigorous evolution, as he regards it, is introduced in the middle 

 of the Cretaceous. 



This new and grand elevation of the vegetable kingdom in 



