GREENLAND. 
275 
been frigid, is evident from the facts that of the fossils in 
question considerably more than half the number were trees, 
whilst at present no trees exist in any part of Greenland, 
though its southern point, Cape Farewell, is in latitude 
59° 47' N., or fully 700 miles farther south than Atanek- 
erdluk ; that amongst them there were upwards of thirty 
different kinds of cone-bearing trees, including several species 
allied to the gigantic Wellingtonia at present growing in Cali- 
fornia ; that the other trees were beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, 
maples, walnuts, limes, a magnolia, hazel, blackthorn, holly, 
logwood, and hawthorn; that they were not represented by 
leaves merely — which occurred, however, in vast profusion — but 
by fossil flowers and fruits, including even two cones of the 
magnolia, thus proving that they did not maintain a precarious 
existence, but ripened their fruits. Ivies and vines twined 
round their trunks, beneath them grew ferns having broad 
fronds, and with them were mingled several evergreen shrubs. 
They were by no means confined to high latitudes, for at 
least forty-six of the species have been found as fossils in Central 
Europe. So far as is at present known, six of them grew no 
farther south than the Baltic, ten have been found in Switzer- 
land, seven in Austria, four in France, seventeen in Italy, six 
in Greece, and four in Devonshire. In fact, these extinct old 
Miocene plants had a much wider geographical range than is 
enjoyed by their allies in the present day ; whence Professor 
Heer has concluded that the temperature of the northern 
hemisphere, at least from Greece to within a few degrees of 
the Pole, was much more uniform during the Miocene era than 
it is at present. The mean annual temperature of North 
Greenland was, he believes, 30°, and of Central Europe 10°, 
higher than it is now. 
A vegetation so luxuriant was probably the home of a large 
and varied amount of animal life ; though, up to this time, their 
remains have been but very sparingly found. Professor Heer, 
however, has detected two fossil insects — one of them a beetle — 
amongst the leaves. 
Such, it has been well remarked, was the variety, luxuriance, 
and abundance of this old Miocene flora, that if land extended 
at that time from Greenland to the Pole, it was probably 
occupied by at least many of the same species of plants. 
