THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



No. XLIX.— JULY, 1868. 



I. — On the Influence of the Gulf Stkeam. 



TTTE last number of the Geological Magazine contained a trans- 

 lation (by Mr. J. E. Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S., of Caerleon) of two 

 lectures by Dr. Oswald Heer, '' On the Miocene Flora of the Polar 

 Eegions," in which the author gives the results of his investigation 

 of the fossil plant-remains from the Tertiary deposits of the north 

 of Canada, Banksland, North Greenland, Iceland, and Spitzbergen. 

 His examination has led him to conclude that, amongst them, there 

 were nine large plants of the fern tribe, 78 kinds of trees, and 

 50 shrubs. Among these, the remains of the beech and .the chest- 

 nut, like those of our own island, the silver fir, spruce fir, and 

 Scotch fir, the white pine of Canada, the Sequoia of California, the 

 cypress and SaUshuna of Japan, the oak of temperate N. America, 

 the poplar, plane-tree, birch, tulip-tree, the walnut, lime-tree, and 

 magnolia have left their remains where they had grown, attesting 

 a once temperate climate in Tertiary times, where now fields of 

 snow and ice (once believed to be eternal) cover the length and 

 breadth of the land. 



Dr. Heer's researches have been carefully considered by the late 

 President of the Geological Society of London (Warington W. 

 Smyth, Esq., M.A., F.E.S.), in his anniversary address (21st Feby., 

 1868), from which we extract the followins: : — 



''In endeavouring to find an explanation for these facts now 

 placed so distinctly before us, Professor Heer has examined a long 

 series of the hypotheses which have from time to time been ad- 

 vanced. He declines to admit, for a moment, any supposition of the 

 displacement of the poles, and objects to the older views as well as 

 to the recently propounded theory of Mr. J. Evans, F.E.S., which 

 seeks to show that modifications of portions of the earth's crust may 

 be attended by an actual movement of that rigid envelope over its 

 internal nucleus.^ 



" Far more important, in the opinion of the Swiss botanist, is the 

 speculation so admirably reasoned out by Sir Charles Lyell, on the 

 climatal changes which must be produced by a new distribution of 

 sea and land. And yet, granting the most favourable circumstances, 

 and assuming that, instead of the present irregular and unequal 

 1 For abstract see Geol. Mag. 1866, Vol. III. p. 171. 



VOL. v.— NO. XLIX. 20 



