860 
XXXV.— Etudes sue la Vegetation du Sud-est de la Eeance 
a l’epoque teetiaee. Par M. le Comte Gr. de Saporta.—Ann. 
Sc. Nat. Ser. iv. svi. 309. xvii. 191. 
Sue le Pole des Vegetaux a eeuilles caduques dans les 
PlOEES TeETIAEES ANTEEIEUEES AU MIOCENE PEOPEEMENT DIT 
et specialement dans cElle du Gttpse d’Aix. Par le Comte 
Gr. de Saporta.—Bibliotheque Univ. et Eev. Suisse, 1863, t. xvi. 
liyr. Mars. 
Peom tlie newer and post-pliocene deposits to which Sir C. Lyell 
and Mr. Huxley have recently compelled our attention, we turn to 
these records of older date, which the Count de Saporta has de¬ 
ciphered for us. Whether it be from a greater persistence of type 
in the Vegetable as compared with the Animal division of organic 
nature, or from some other cause, we look to earlier than to pliocene 
pages for the clue to the solution of those problems which puzzle us 
most sorely, presented by the existing distribution of plants on the 
surface of the globe. Already we have referred, in a previous volume 
of this Journal, to the important bearing upon such problems which 
the fossil records of the Chalk and Tertiary beds possess. Pliocene 
and post-pliocene deposits supply some minor details of great interest 
it is true: for example, in the Norfolk lignites we have evidence that 
the spruce fir, at even their recent geological date, was an English 
tree, yet a comparison of the table of the species of plants of the 
Norfolk ‘Eorest-bed’ with that of the associated mammalia given 
by Sir C. Lyell in his “Antiquity of Alan” (pp. 216-7), brings out 
vividly the contrast between the two kingdoms to which we have 
alluded, in respect to the application of pliocene data to the illustra¬ 
tion of present phenomena of plant-distribution. While all the 
plants, the spruce excepted, are English, and nearly all still growing 
wild in Norfolk, the mammalia are almost all extinct, and not only 
so, but many of them belong to gigantic exotic and tropical forms. 
Pliocene vegetation, therefore, being so nearly identical with that 
now existing, we are obliged to look to earlier beds for the data which, 
as we anticipate, are to help us to clear up our difficulties. De 
Saporta, however, does not agree with us here. He holds that 
“ . . . les assimilations entre les espcces fossiles et les especes vivantes 
“ quelque interessantes qu’elles soient en elles-meme, n’ont ni la 
“ portee, ni la signification qu’on a souvent cherche a leur donner.” 
And that, though it is true, the vegetation of Tertiary Europe must 
have been remarkably similar, at one or other period, in general 
character to the existing vegetation of India, Australia, and Alexico, 
yet this conformity would, in his opinion, indicate rather that external 
conditions obtained at these respective Tertiary periods analogous to 
those of the regions specified, than that there must necessarily have 
existed ancient communication between these areas. # M. de Saporta 
* M. de Saporta excepts, however, North America, which he says “ toute porte 
a croire avoir ete reunie a l’Europe pendant une longue serie de siecles. ” 
