UPPER MIOCENE OF SWITZERLAND. 
215 
the bones of quadniinana, or of the ape and monkey tribe, 
which were discovered in 1837, the first of that order of 
quadrupeds detected in Europe. They were found near 
Auch, in the Department of Gers, in latitude 43° 39' IS", 
about forty miles west of Toulouse. They were referred by 
MM. Lartet and Blainville to a genus closely allied to the 
Gibbon, to which they gave the name of JPliopitheciis. Sub¬ 
sequently, in 1856, M. Lartet described another species of 
the same family of long-armed apes {Hylohates)^ which he 
obtained from strata of the same age at Saint-Gandens, in 
the Haute Garonne. The fossil remains of this animal con¬ 
sisted of a portion of a lower jaw with teeth and the shaft 
of a humerus. It is supposed to have been a tree-climbing 
frugivorous ape, equalling man in stature. As the trunks 
of oaks are common in the lignite beds in which it lay, it 
has received the generic name of Dryopithecus. The angle 
formed by the ascending ramus of the jaw and the alveolar 
border is less open, and therefore more like the human sub¬ 
ject, than in the Chimpanzee, and what is still more remark¬ 
able, the fossil, a young but adult individual, had all its milk 
teeth replaced by the second set, while its last true molar 
(or wisdom-tooth) was still undeveloped, or only existed as 
a -germ in the jaw-bone. In the mode, therefore, of the suc¬ 
cession of its teeth (which, as in all the Old-World apes, ex¬ 
actly agree in number with those in man) it differed from 
the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, and corresponded with the hu¬ 
man species. 
Upper Miocene Beds of (Eningen, in Switzerland. —The fa- 
luns of the Loire first served, as already stated (page 211), 
as the type of the Miocene formations in EurojDe. They 
yielded a plentiful harvest of marine fossil shells and corals, 
but were entirely barren of plants and insects. In Switzer¬ 
land, on the other hand, deposits of the same age have been 
discovered, remarkable for their botanical and entomological 
treasures. We are indebted to Professor Heer, of Zurich, for 
the description, restoration, and classification of several hun¬ 
dred species and varieties of these fossil plants, the whole of 
which he has illustrated by excellent figures in his “ Floi-a 
Tertiaria Helvetise.” This great work, and those of Adolphe 
Brongniart, Unger, Goeppert and others, show that this class 
of fossils is beginning to play the same important part in 
the classification of the tertiary strata containing lignite or 
brown coal as an older flora has long played in enabling us 
to understand the ancient coal or carboniferous formation. 
No small skepticism has always prevailed among botanists 
as to whether the leaves alone and the wood of plants could 
