on the higher lands, but being comparatively fragile, were not 
preserved. 
Later, when the newcomers had secured their bearings, 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 coveringtheland 
at a prodigious rate, new forms arising by the hundred, compel- 
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 cocoa- 
nut palms. Greenland at this time, instead of being a cold, ice- 
bound, forestless wilderness with a meager alpine vegetation, had 
at least a temperate climate, with a flora of elms, oaks, maples 
and magnolias. 
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-saw- 
ings, the atmosphere grew colder, the latter half of the era being 
marked by a reign of ice. Though glaciers only covered part of 
the northern and southern hemispheres, it is probable that the 
temperature of the whole earth was considerably lowered. Moun- 
tain-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, because of climatic and geographical changes, were ap- 
parently continually 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 con- 
tinent, crossed over to Asia. The reptilian monsters died, and 
as with the Paleozoic club-mosses, left only their comparatively 
small and insignificant relatives, snakes, crocodiles, etc., to keep 
alive their traditions. In their place came the mammals, includ- 
ing man. Fish, bird, beast and plant, in general, differed but 
little from those of to-day, though their distribution over the 
globe have undergone 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, 
forest 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 the region. Plant life greatly changed. 
Grasses multiplied and prairies arose. Magnolias, beeches, 
and sycamores still lived as far north as southern Montana, while 
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