Later, when the newcomers had secured their bearing's, many- 
new types appeared, such as oaks, maples, walnuts, ivies, hollies, 
elms/ beeches, chestnuts and several kinds of monocotyledons 
(plants with one seed leaf) such as sedges, palms and grasses. 
Before the end of the era, flowering plants were covering the land 
at a prodigious rate, new forms arising by the hundred, compell- 
ing the cycads, ferns and even the conifers to fall into the back- 
ground. Monocotyledons are said to have been found with the most 
ancient remains of flowering plants. The oldest fossil of one of 
their principal families (the palms) was discovered in France and 
resembles, in both fruit and leaf, our modern cocoanut palms. 
Greenland at this time, instead of being a cold, ice-bound, forest- 
less wilderness with a meaner alpine vegetation, had at least a 
temperate climate, with a flora of elms, oaks, maples and mag- 
nolias. 
The Cenozoic era, from a plant standpoint, started right, but 
failed to keep its early promise. At its outset, the climate was mild 
and equable, with a luxuriant vegetation flourishing far within the 
Arctic circle. By slow degrees with many see-sawings, the atmos- 
phere grew colder, the latter half of the era being marked by a 
reign of ice. Though glaciers only covered part ot the northern 
and southern hemispheres, it is probable that the temperature of 
the whole earth was considerably lowered. Mountain-making 
during the first part resulted in the Alps, Caucasus, Himalayas 
and in further elevating the Rockies. Almost all the continents 
were united by land connections at different times, as well as 
disunited. It was an age of travelling, probably on the grandest 
scale the world has ever known. Land animals and plants, be- 
cause of climatic and geographical changes, were apparently con- 
tinually on the move— here, there and everywhere. The whole 
living world turned gypsy. The elephant family came to America 
and camels and horses, originally native to our continent, crossed 
over to Asia. The reptilian monsters died, and as with the Pal- 
eozoic clubmosses, left only their comparatively small and insig- 
nificant relatives, snakes, crocodiles, etc. to keep alive their tradi- 
tions. In their place came the mammals, including man. Fish, 
bird, beast and plant, in general, differed but little from those of 
today, though their distribution over the globe has tmdergone 
remarkable changes. 
In the forepart of the era, subtropical temperatures prevailed 
in Europe and the United States. Mingled with the ferns, horse- 
tails, pines, sequoias (redwoods), and yews, relics of the more 
ancient vegetation, were the willows, elms, palms, bananas, myr- 
tles, beeches, magnolias, and walnuts of the modern period. 
Fossil ginkgo leaves have been collected by the hundred in west- 
ern Montana, where now are forests of spruce and cottonwood. 
Palms grew in northern Germany, and Alaska had a temperate 
climate flora. Cycads were rare,' and had practically assumed 
their present position. Lemurs and primitive monkeys swarmed 
in the North American forests. Poisonous snakes were still un- 
known. Little horses no bigger than a cat, with toes instead of 
hoofs, roamed the grassy, park-like glades, while the dusky, for- 
est aisles and subtropic nights first heard the swish and squeak 
of flying bats. 
As the era sped forward and the climate slowly cooled, the 
monkeys willed their forest homes to the squirrels and dis- 
appeared from this region. Plant life greatly changed. 
Grasses multiplied and prairies arose. Magnolias, beeches, 
and sycamores still lived as far north as southern Montana, while 
the bread-fruit (similar to our tropical form) grew in Oregon. 
Palms flourished in Colorado. Conifers were extremelv abundant 
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