Ileer — Miocene Flora of the Polar Regions. 



273 



other collection that will compare with this, neither is there, to my 

 knowledge, any other locality within the same district which gives 

 so good a sequence from the Coral-rag to the Gault. 



Pit sunk. E. 



1 



Section of Strata at Upware on the Cam. 

 Coral Rag in situ. 

 Coral Rag intermixed witli Kimmeridge Clay (the bed marked (6) extends as liigh up the 



denuded surface of a as the deposit marked h although not shown in the diagram.) 

 Pure Kimmeridge Clay. 

 Lower phosphatic bed of Lower Greensand, rich in fossils and often cemented so as to form 



hard conglomerates, and containing a large quantity of derived fossils. 

 Lower Greensand, with few or no fossils. 

 Upper phosphatic bed of Lower Greensand. 

 Upper layer of Lower Greensand. 

 Gault of about one foot in thickness. 

 Phosphatic bed in Gault of five inches in thickness. 

 Non-fossiliferous Gault, seven feet. 



l^OTZCES OIP 3yEE3VI:OII^S. 



I. — On the Miocene Flora of the Polar Regions. Two Lectures 

 given at the Annual meeting of the Natural History Society of 

 Switzerland on the 9th and 11th September, 1867, at Rheinfelden, 

 by Professor Oswald Heer, of Ziirich. 



(Translated by John Edward Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S.) 

 I. 



PEOFESSOR HEER has had the opportunity of examining a 

 large number of fossil plants from the museums of Dublin, 

 London, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, which have been discovered 

 in the north of Canada (on the Mackenzie), in Banksland, in North 

 Greenland, in Iceland, and in Spitzbergen. They reveal to us valu- 

 able information both as to the diffusion of plants in the early ages 

 of the world, and also as to the climate which prevailed at that time 

 in the far north. This Arctic Miocene flora, so far as can be ascer- 

 tained from these specimens, consists of 162 species :i 18 species 

 belong to the cryptogamia, and amongst them we notice small fungi, 

 which have formed spots and dots on the leaves of trees, just as the 

 leaf-fungi do at the present day ; and 9 species of fine large plants 

 of the fern tribe, with which the ground under the forests was pro- 

 bably clothed. The phanerogamous plants consist of 31 species of 

 trees allied to the fir tribe, 14 monocotyledons, and 99 dicotyledons. 

 Judging from their analogy with the nearest living plants, there 



1 These species are described and drawn in the work of Professor Heer, Ueber die 

 fossile Flora der Polarlande." Zurich ; Fr : Schulthess, 1867. 



