Tra'V'eiis. — On the former Warmth in high Northern Latitudes. 467 



tious of Dr. Falconer, and Sir Proby Cautley, in the Sewalik Hills. Sir 

 Charles remarks that these and other investigations lead irresistibly to the 

 opinion that there was a much greater analogy in those ages than there is 

 now between the temperature of the West Indies in latitude 18° and that of 

 Europe in latitude 48°. But he also says, which is much more significant 

 for the purposes of my contention, that if we pass from the equatorial to the 

 arctic latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, we find an assemblage of fossil 

 plants resembling in many respects that of OEninghen, in Switzerland, in 

 which Professor Heer detected the leaves, fruits, and sometimes flowers of 

 about 500 species of plants, in which he found a near resemblance to the 

 flora of the Carolinas and other southern states of the American Union. 

 Of the Lower Miocene flora he says " that it has been traced from Italy 

 northwards to Devonshire, and even to Iceland. In these high latitudes, 

 however, the tropical and sub-tropical genera disappear, though the -sdne 

 and tulip-tree and some other forms indicate a temperature 15° to 20°Fahr. 

 warmer than that now belonging to the same countries," quoting Heer and 

 Gaudin, " Climat du Pays Tertiare," pp. 174-207, in support of his 

 statement. 



Fm-ther on he says (still speaking of the Lower Miocene flora), "In 

 Spitzbergen, in latitude 78° 56' N., no less than ninety-five species of 

 plants are described by Heer, many of them agreeing specifically with North 

 Greenland fossils. In this flora we observe Taxodium of two species, a 

 hazel, poplar, alder, beech, plane-tree, lime (Tllia), and a Potamogeton, 

 which last indicates a fresh-water formation, accumulated on the spot. 

 Such a vigorous growth of fossil trees, in a country within 12° of the pole, 

 where there are now scarcely any shrubs except a dwarf wOlow and a few 

 herbaceous and cryptogamous plants, most of the surface being covered 

 with snow and ice, is truly remarkable." 



With regard to the Eocene fauna and flora of Central Europe, we learn 

 that it possesses species and genera having a great afiinity to Lower Miocene 

 forms, but departing further than these do from the modern European type, 

 and resembling, in many respects, those of the tropical regions of India and 

 Australia, and that, especially in the London clay of the Isle of Sheppey, 

 fossil fruits of the cocoa-nut, screw-xjine, and custard-apple remind us of 

 the hottest parts of the globe. In the beginning of the eleventh chapter, 

 Sh- Charles sjpecially calls his reader's attention to the fact, that an 

 examination of the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene strata, viewed suc- 

 cessively in the order of their higher antiquity, affords evidence of a 

 temperature continuaUy increasing in jrroijortion as we recede further fruui 

 the glacial epoch. (The italics are mine.) Passing now to the secondary 

 formations generally, the same law as that traced in the teitiarius is found 



