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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
and California ( Sequoia ), and Cycadese, most of which are refer- 
able to the genus Zamia , species of which are now met with 
within the tropics. A leaf was also found. From the general 
nature of the flora Heer considers that, in the early part of the 
Cretaceous period, the climate of the now ice-covered Green- 
land was somewhat like that which now prevails in Egypt and 
the Canary Islands. 
The upper Cretaceous beds, referred to the Cenomanian or 
Turonian, occur at Atane and on the shore below Atanekerdluk, on 
the south side of the Noursoak Peninsula. The number of species 
is nearly equal to that found in the lower Cretaceous at Kome, 
but their type is almost totally different, although five species 
are common, but they are quite unlike the Greenland Miocene 
plants. Sequoia , again, predominates among the conifers, and 
with it a Tkuites and Salisburea were found : cycads are rare. 
Among the ferns there are still some Gleichenice , but other 
forms, as Marattiacece and Dictyophyllum , have disappeared. 
The predominant forms are dicotyledons ; there are three 
species of poplar, one fig, one Myrica , a Sassafras , a Cred- 
neria , some Proteoides and Leguminosites , and two Mag- 
notice * 
Professor Nordenskjold, in speaking of this Cretaceous flora, 
in a lecture to the Eoyal Swedish Academy (1875), says, 
“ Among the ferns, cycadese, and coniferse of Noursoak 
Peninsula (lower Cretaceous) were found a few impressions of a 
species of poplar, Populus pHmceva , which formed the only 
and at the same time the oldest known representative of the 
forest vegetation now prevailing in the temperate zone. Never- 
theless, the vegetation of the Arctic tracts was already during 
the Cretaceous period undergoing a complete transformation. 
Evidence of this has been obtained from the same locality, 
Atanekerdluk, on the south side of the Noursoak Peninsula. 
Here impressions of plants may be discovered belonging to the 
Cretaceous formation, not to the lower but the upper portion of 
it. The vegetation is here quite different. The ferns and 
cycadese have disappeared, and in their place we find deciduous 
trees and other dicotyledons in astonishing variety of forms, 
among which a species of fig may be mentioned, of which not 
only the leaves but also the fruit have been obtained in a fossil 
state ; and species of Magnolia, Sassafras, Proteoides, &c. The 
climate that then prevailed over the whole globe was therefore 
still warm and luxuriant, even if, at least in the Arctic regions, 
considerably modified from what it formerly had been, in- 
asmuch as the flowerless vegetation (which was now begin- 
ning to die out) — as far as we can judge from its present 
representatives, the ferns — required a warm humid climate ; 
* See P. II. Scott, “ Geol. Mag.” Feb. 1872, p. 71. 
