Ch. XV.] MIOCENE STRATA OF SWITZERLAND. 965 



This plant is nearly allied to a living North Indian species, C. euca- 

 lyptoides. The leaves, as before mentioned, are easily recognized as 

 having two side veins, which run up uninterruptedly to their point. 



The lowest of the Swiss Miocene beds, the sandstone of Kalligen, 

 on the Lake of Thun, in which 32 plants have been found, contains 

 no less than 6 species in common with (Eningen — a proportion of 18 

 in a hundred. Among them we find Taxodium, closely allied to the 

 deciduous cypress of the Mississippi, also a pine, an aruudo, and one 

 of the Proteacese, Dryandroides lignitum. 



Alleged, difference in the degree of affinity of the Upper Miocene plants 

 and shells to the living creation. 



Before concluding my remarks on the fossil Flora and Fauna of 

 Switzerland, I may say a few words on the embarrassment which 

 some geologists have felt in consequence of the alleged anomaly of 

 the results derived from the study of the fossil shells as compared to 

 the fossil plants and insects. Of the shells of the marine Molasse 

 which underlies the freshwater deposit of (Eningen, a fourth or 

 more than a fourth have been declared by able conchologists to be 

 of species still existing, whereas all the plants and insects have 

 been said to differ from living ones. On looking more closely into 

 the evidence, we shall perhaps find that this supposed inconsistency 

 disappears. 



Professor Heer, it is true, does not identify any Miocene plants 

 with living species, but he has enumerated 72 species which he terms 

 " homologous," 40 of them known by their fruits as well as their 

 leaves ; and although he is opposed to the doctrine of transmutation, 

 he admits that these homologous species are so closely allied to the 

 nearest forms now living, that the latter may be their lineal descend- 

 ants. He cannot, he says, decide " whether the Variation has been 

 brought about by some influence which has been exerted continuously 

 for ages, or whether at some given moment of past time the old types 

 were struck with a new image." 



Xow the degree of relationship here implied would be at once ac- 

 cepted by most naturalists as constituting specific identity. Let us 

 suppose that the sessile variety of the common oak, Quercus rohur, 

 had been only known to us as a fossil from (Eningen and not as a liv- 

 ing form, and that the other living variety, in which the flower and 

 acorns are supported on a stalk, was the only form now existing. The 

 first of these would, according to the method adopted in Professor 

 Heer's work, rank as an extinct Miocene species ; whereas the two 

 forms now co-existing in European forests are generally regarded by 

 botanists as mere varieties. That such a distinction would have been 

 made by Heer we are entitled to infer from the manner in which he 

 has dealt with the fossil specimens of a plant called by him Flanera 

 TJngeri. To the leaves and fruit of this tree, which is allied to the 



