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CHAPTER XXII. 



THE MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE FORMATIONS. 



THE Eocene strata of England taken as a whole may 

 be looked upon as estuarine beds. At the base, the 

 Woolwich and Beading beds, and also the upper parts of 

 the series in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, consist 

 of strata deposited in brackish, salt, and fresh water, at 

 or near the mouth of a great river, and the abundance 

 of plants and terrestrial remains in the London Clay, 

 and other marine divisions of the series, proves that 

 they also were deposited near the mouths of such rivers, 

 say, as the Mississippi and Amazon. Both in their 

 lower and upper divisions, these strata in France and 

 England contain a large terrestrial mammalian fauna, 

 the genera of which are so antique that they have no 

 very close relation with those now living. Nevertheless, 

 they are remotely related to living genera, and some 

 may even be the direct ancestors of living species 

 through Miocene and Pliocene intermediate forms. To 

 give an idea of the antiquity of this old fauna, it is 

 safe to say that when they lived the Alps had scarcely 

 any place as a principal mountain range. 



This book has little to do with palaeontology, but I 

 have already stated in a previous chapter, that in 

 Germany there are formations containing terrestrial 

 (as distinguished from marine fossils), with mixed 

 Eocene and Miocene generic forms, and I lay a little 



