154 SEWARD: FOSSIL CLIMATES. 
important change in the type of vegetation: in the northern hemi- 
sphere are introduced those new elements already recognised in the. 
abnormal southern flora of Permo-Carboniferous times. e have 
here the last survivors of the Carboniferous types in joie. 
with the newer forms; as the Marquis of Saporta puts it: ‘Old age 
and infancy together. 
As to the Jurassic climate, the Cycads so abundant in our own 
island suggest a temperature considerably higher than the present. 
To turn for a moment from plants to animals. Prof. Neumayr, after 
careful and detailed examination of the Jurassic fossils, recognises in 
the differences of the Ammonites and other genera from different 
latitudes evidence for the existence of climatic zones. 
plants in Arctic regions. From Kome, Atave, and other Green- 
land districts, Dicotyledons, Ferns, Cycads, and Conifers have 
been collected of Cretaceous age, indicating a climate warm and 
possibly moist. 
n the lowest beds of Cretaceous age we have suddenly 
appearing the deciduous-leaved Dicotyledons, described as the 
greatest revolution ever seen in the botanical world. As to the 
significance of this with reference to climatology, the sharper 
seasonal contrasts, and other matters of greater or less interest, 
we cannot stay to discuss. 
In conclusion, to pass to surer ground, and note the evidence 
afforded by Tertiary plants; evidence of greater value in proportion 
to the closer relationship between Tertiary forms and their living 
descendants. In Eocene times—the first chapter in Tertiary 
history—Europe—then an archipelago of islands—enjoyed a climate 
sub-tropical or even tropical. alms, Dracenas, Eucalyptus, 
Magnolias, Lycopodiums, Aspleniums, with the more familiar Chestnuts, 
Willows, Figs, Maples, and other genera, flourished in these latitudes. 
we have evidence of the effect of difference in latitude, already 
evident in the preceding Cretaceous and Jurassic flora. This 
English Eocene flora, according to Mr. Starkie Gardner, could now 
exist in San the Iceland flora in the Isle of Wight, that of 
Spitzbergen in Sweden, that of Grinnell Land in North Norway. 
In the succeeding and younger Tertiary beds we have a rich and 
varied evergreen flora, linked by many ties with the flora of America 
and the tropical floras of India and Australia. 
Naturalist, 
