ARCTIC MIOCENE ELORA. 
239 
American Character of the Flora. 
—If we consider not merely the 
number of species but those plants 
which constitute the mass of the 
is very characteristic of different 
deposits of Brown Coal in Ger¬ 
many. It has been called Cinna- 
mommn Rossmassleri by Heer (see 
Fig. 155). The leaves are easily 
recoOTized as having two side 
veins, which run up uninterrupt- 
edlv to their point. 
•/ 1 © 
Fig. 1.55. 
Lower Miocene vegetation, we find 
the European part of the fossil 
flora very much less prominent 
than in the OEningen beds, while 
the foreground is occupied by 
American forms, by evergreen 
oaks, maples, poplars, planes, Liq- 
• •• 1 Cy^L//C>/€'t/y O t’/€'# t'Cl'CL/f/C/C/l/w J_l* 
odium, and ternate-leaved pines. ger. Upper and Lower Miocene, 
There is also a much greater fu- Switzerland and Germany. 
sion of the characters now belonging to distinct botanical 
provinces than in the Upper Miocene flora, and we shall 
find this fusion still more strikingly exemplified as we go 
back to the antecedent Eocene and Cretaceous periods. 
Professor Heer has advocated the doctrine, first advanced 
by Unger to explain the large number of American genera 
in the Miocene flora of Europe, that the present basin of the 
Atlantic was occupied by land over which the Miocene flora 
could pass freely. But other able botanists have shown that 
it is far more probable that the American plants came from 
the east and not from the west, and instead of reaching 
Europe by the shortest route over an imaginary Atlantis, 
migrated in an opposite direction, crossing the whole of 
Asia. 
Arctic Miocene Flora. —But when we indulge in specula¬ 
tions as to the geographical origin of the Miocene plants of 
Central Europe, we must take into account the discoveries 
recently made of a rich terrestrial flora having flourished in 
the Arctic Regions in the Miocene period from which many 
species may have migrated from a common centre so as to 
reach the present continents of Europe, Asia, and America. 
Professor Heer has examined the various collections of fossil 
plants that have been obtained in N. Greenland (lat. 70°), 
Iceland, Spitzbergen, and other parts of the Arctic regions. 
