200 WARM CLIMATE OF UPPEE MIOCENE PERIOD. [c H . x 



Conus, Cancellaria, and Oliva — forms all of them foreign to 

 our seas as well as to our British Pliocene deposits and 

 proper to and indicative of a higher temperature. 



The French strata of the same age, called the Faluns of 

 the Loire, point to similar inferences, and, like the contem- 

 poraneous beds of the Vienna basin, contain some fossil shells 

 of species now living in Senegal or off the western coast of 



flora and fauna of the whole 

 of Central Europe afford unmistakable evidence of a climate 

 approaching that now only experienced in sub-tropical re- 

 gions. In one of the newest deposits of this Upper Miocene 



Africa. 



Miocene 



formation, Professor Heer 



detected, 



(Enin 



Switzerland, the leaves, fruits, and sometimes flowers, of 

 about 500 species of plants, in which we find a near re- 

 semblance to the flora of the Carolinas and other Southern 



Union. After selecting 483 of these 



American 



species as capable oi comparison, specifically or generically, 

 with plants now living, he finds that 131 are such as might 

 be referred to the temperate zone, 266 to a sub-tropical, and 

 85 to a tropical latitude. In the present state of the globe, 

 the island of Madeira presents the nearest approach to such a 

 flora. The proportion of arborescent as compared to the her- 



amon 



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cold. A rich insect fauna, such as belongs to a warm climate, 

 is also attested by the great number of the species of those 

 genera which are most easily preservable in a fossil state. The 

 reptiles which play so insignificant a part in the Pliocene 

 fauna of Central and Northern Enror^ farm 



formations 



a more con- 

 it (Enin 



there are two tortoises and three species of salamanders, one 



in size than the living species of 



of them more gigantic 



Japan. 



monkev tribe are also met with in Mio 



* 



cene strata near the foot of the Pyrenees in France. Among 



armed 



and the femur of a large species of this family has been de- 

 tected by Dr. Kaup in strata of the same age at Eppelsheim, 

 near Darmstadt, in a latitude which corresponds to the 





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