1883-1884.] 263 



site to separate stages of the Eocene from the Miocene, and 

 none of his work bears investigation. The authors of the works 

 on the floras of Sotzka, Haring, Monte Promina, etc., considered 

 they were describing Eocene floras, but Heer differed with 

 them ; and even described the Eocene Bovey flora as Miocene. 

 Shall his unsupported dictum any longer outweigh all other 

 evidence and probability 1 Professors Dawson, Newberry, 

 Marcou, Saporta, and many others who have studied the ques- 

 tion think not ; but the mass of even leading geologists 

 in our country continue to speak of the Miocene floras of Mull, 

 Antrim, and Greenland, as if no doubts regarding their ages 

 could possibly exist. 



Having disposed, I trust, of preconceived ideas regarding the 

 value of the plants, I now propose to examine the straligraphical 

 evidence, with a view to further testing the Miocene hypo- 

 thesis. 



The extent and thickness of the Basalts of Antrim and the 

 adjoining counties are so well known to you that they need not 

 be referred to. They are but a small fragment, however, the 

 mere southern limit of a series of stupendous outputs of lava 

 that once extended in an unbroken mass northward through 

 Scotland and the Faroes to Iceland. Nor does this represent 

 their extreme limits, for, as Professor Geikie has pointed out, 

 innumerable dykes diverge from them, and traverse England 

 and Scotland even to the shores of the North Sea. Vast as the 

 area covered by them is, it is not wholly without parallel else- 

 where. A region in the Deccan, 200,000 square miles in extent, 

 has been converted into a plateau of horizontal sheets of basalt, 

 whose aggregate thickness is 6000 feet. These flows are of a 

 Cretaceous age, and therefore preceded ours ; but in Oregon 

 another enormous area, estimated to equal that of the whole of 

 England and France united, has been overwhelmed at a subse- 

 quent date, and became an undulating plain of basalt, so recently 

 in fact, that the latest flows may have taken place in the human 

 period. All these are believed to have welled up from great 

 fissures, for no conceivable number of cones or craters would 



