50 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
It is in the Miocene period, however, that we have the remains 
of the most wonderful flora preserved, especially in the molasse 
beds of Switzerland. From its warm temperate character, 
Prof. Heer thinks the climate must then have been about 
sixteen degrees higher than it is now. One peculiar feature 
about the Miocene flora is its assemblage of existing genera 
which have since been rendered locally extinct, so that we 
now find them in parts of the world at immense distances 
froncfteach other. This has been greatly the result of subsequent 
geographical changes, some of which, such as those occurring in 
the glacial epoch, were of an extraordinarily rigorous character. 
No fewer than seven hundred species of fossil phanerogamous J 
plants have been obtained from the Swiss Miocene beds alone. 
Of these nearly three hundred were trees, and two hundred and 
fifty shrubs. One hundred and sixty species were herbaceous 
Fig. 5. 
fossil flower ( Parana ceningensis), t'pper miocene, ceningen. 
From a specimen in Ipswich Museum. 
flowering plants ; many of them grasses and sedges, others with 
showy blossoms or corollas (fig. 5). The Miocene flora plainly 
shows us that a great differentiation had taken place in the form 
and grouping of insect-fertilized plants since they first appeared. 
We now meet with Composite flowers, where we have an abortion 
of some and a specialization of other florets, all diminished in size 
and peculiarly arranged on a disk, so as to suggest the popular 
idea that the whole colony is only one flower, as is certainly the 
notion with the daisy, dandelion, and sunflower, &c. Such a 
modification of floral parts would only be expected by a botanist 
in periods subsequent to the first appearance of these flowers, 
and he regards them as produced % a gradual modification. 
Papilionaceous flowers, like those of the pea, remarkable for 
the different sizes and shapes of the petals and their different 
