UPPER PRESH-WATER MOLASSE. 
217 
wanting in Italy. If we then examine the Miocene forma¬ 
tions of the same country, exotic forms become more abun¬ 
dant, especially the palms, whether they belong to the Eu¬ 
ropean or x\merican fan-palms, Chammrops and Sabal^ or to 
the more tropical family of the date-palms or .Phcenicites^ 
which last are conspicuous in the Lower Miocene beds of 
Central Europe. Although we have not found the fruit or 
flower of these palms in a fossil state, the leaves are so char¬ 
acteristic that no one doubts the family to which they be¬ 
long, or hesitates to accept them as indications of a warm 
and sub-tropical climate. 
When the Miocene formations are traced to the north- 
w^ard of the 50th degree ot latitude, the fossil palms fail us, 
but the greater proportion of the leaves, whether identical 
with those of existing European trees or of forms now un¬ 
known in Europe, which had accompanied the Miocene palms, 
still continue to characterize rocks of the same age, until we 
meet with them not only in Iceland, but in Greenland, in lat¬ 
itude 70° N., and in Spitzbergen, lat. 78° 56', or within about 
11 degrees of the pole, and under circumstances which clear¬ 
ly show them to have been indigenous in those regions, and 
not to have been drifted from the south (seep. 240). Not only, 
therefore, has the botanist aflbrded the geologist much pa- 
laBontological assistance in identifying distinct tertiary for¬ 
mations in distant places by his power of accurately discrim¬ 
inating the forms, veining, and microscopic structure of lea ves 
or wood,.but, independently of that exact knowledge deriv¬ 
able from the organs of fructiflcation, we are indebted to 
him for one of the most novel, unexpected results of modern 
scientific inquiry. 
The Miocene formations of Switzerland have been called 
Molasse^ a term derived from the French mol^ and applied to 
a incoherent, greenish sandstone, occupying the country 
between the Alps and the Jura. This molasse comprises 
three divisions, of which the middle one is marine, and being 
closely related by its shells to the faluns of Touraine, may 
be classed as Upper Miocene. The two others are fresh-wa¬ 
ter, the upper of which may be also grouped with the faluns, 
while the lower must be referred to the Lower Miocene, as 
defined in the next chapter. 
Upper Fresh-water Molasse. —This formation is best seen 
at CEningen, in the valley of the Rhine, between Constance 
and Schaffhausen, a locality celebrated for having produced 
in the year 1700 the supposed human skeleton called by 
Scheuchzer “ homo diluvii testis,” a fossil afterwards demon¬ 
strated by Cuvier to be a reptile, or aquatic salamander, of 
10 
