VOLCANOS OF THE HAUTE LOIRE AND THE ARDECHE. 251 
Tuy en Velay, and it is well to bear in mind that thn eleva- 
tion of some of the highest mountain ranges in the world has 
taken place since the Eocene epoch. We have picked up 
Eocene fossils at a height of nearly 10,000 feet on the Swiss 
Alps, and friends have sent us specimens from the height of 
20,000 feet from the mountains of Thibet. In Europe, in Asia, 
in Africa, the stony relics of animals which once flourished in 
the deep waters of the Eocene seas are now elevated thou- 
sands of feet above the level of the plains. The very sites 
of great cities, such as London and Paris, are crowded with the 
fossil remains of animals which lived on Eocene lands, or fre- 
quented Eocene waters, and whose forms and shapes testify 
to the vast climatal changes which have happened in our lati- 
tudes since they lived and died. The mammalia of that epoch 
were so strange in form and structure that it is difficult to 
recognize in them any relation to existing species. The 
palseotheres, which frequented the shores of seas, estuaries, 
or lakes, where are now the Isle of Wight, London, Paris, and 
Auvergne, were types of the existing rhinoceres, tapir, and 
horse ; and the Hyaenodon which preyed upon them, and whose 
remains have been found in Hampshire and in Auvergne, was a 
•carnivore which combined the destructive energies of the wolf, 
the hyaena, and the tiger. Then as regards the plants. The 
Eocene plants of these latitudes were of sub-tropical types and 
genera, and have almost altogether disappeared from lands 
whose climate is no longer adapted to the palm, the cinnamon, 
and the custard fruit. With them, too, have disappeared from 
the seas the turtle, the great sub-tropical shark, with numerous 
forms of sub-tropical shells ; and the crocodile no longer haunts 
our lakes or rivers, as it did when the gypsum of Montmartre 
was accumulating where now is that Parisian hill. 
It is impossible to visit the museums in Paris and see there 
the relics of mammalia, reptiles, and birds which have been 
found in Upper Eocene lacustrine beds, and the shells and other 
remains of marine animals which lived in the Lower Eocene 
seas, without feeling sure that Eocene lands as well as waters 
were teeming with life. Fifty extinct types of mammalia have 
been found in the Paris gypsum alone. And yet all we know 
of the land-life of the Eocene epoch may be said to be fur- 
nished by a set of quarries which in France and England 
together would not occupy a square mile of ground. No wonder 
Sir Charles Lyell insisted on the imperfection of the record. 
Now the Miocene strata of the Continent, so poorly represented 
in Great Britain, afford many more fossil remains of land 
animals attesting the existence of Continental areas inhabited 
by vast numbers of quadrupeds, which lived on the borders of 
ancient rivers, and whose remains are found in the silts of 
