THE TERTIARY PERIOD. 225 



Life of the Miocene. — The fossil remains which arc found in this 

 old Miocene lake bed indicate the life of those times. I can only 

 point out by a few examples some of its salientpoints. 



Not the least remarkable was the flora of the Miocene. In rny 

 excursions to northwestern Nebraska, I found traces and impres- 

 sions of many land plants, but unfortunately they were too fragile 

 to remove them from the containing matrix, and all attempts to ac- 

 complish it resulted in their destruction. Among those identified 

 were cottonwoods (Populus), willows (Sa/ix), magnolias, oaks (Quer- 

 cus), sweet gum trees {Li quid amber), sassafras, our southern cypress 

 (Sequoia), Glyphtostrobus, which is closely allied to the preceding, 

 palms, fig trees (Fiais), lindens, birches, maples, pines, etc. Other 

 observers in other regions have observed many more species, and 

 have especially noted the vast abundance of the Sequoias and their 

 congeners which abounded in Miocene times, not only in America, 

 but over the whole of northern Europe and Asia, and even in 

 Greenland, Iceland and Spitzenbergen.* The forms, however, 

 that Heer describes from Greenland, Dawson supposes to be of the 

 Eocene Age. However that may be, it is clear that in Nebraska 

 there flourished in Miocene times trees of the same gigantic charac- 

 ter and even of the same genus, and probably of the same species, 

 as now grow in the sequestered vales of California. Some of the 

 United States geologists have, indeed, expressed the conviction 

 that in that age Nebraska was covered by a vast savanna. I take 

 the opposite ground, because of the occurrence in the Nebraska 

 Miocene beds of many species of trees. Besides these giant cedars 

 that here loomed heavenward, there were species of palms and fig 

 trees, as stated above, and these helped to give the vegetation that 

 warm, temperate, or semi-tropical aspect which marked its facies 

 as a whole. 



Animal Life. — Along with this warm, teirmerate flora, there ex- 

 isted in Miocene times a still more wonderful animal life. Perhaps 

 never have the conditions for mammalian life been so favorable as 

 during this epoch. The few that can be noticed in this chapter 

 can simply illustrate its general character and richness. The in- 

 sectivora, which were represented by several genera and species, 

 must be passed over. Among the rodents the rat family was al- 

 ready represented by a species called by Lcidy, Eumys elegans. A 



*See on this subject Gray's Address to the American Association, Gray's Forest Geogra- 

 phy, Saparta's Anaenne Vegetation Polaire, Heer's Flora Arctica. 



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