o that of Louisiana, North Africa, and South China, while
the Upper Miocene climate of the same country would correspond to that of
the south of Spain, Southern Japan, and Georgia (U.S. of America). Of this
latter flora, found chiefly at Oeninghen in the northern extremity of
Switzerland, 465 species are known, of which 166 species are trees or
shrubs, half of them being evergreens. They comprise sequoias like the
Californian giant trees, camphor-trees, cinnamons, sassafras, bignonias,
cassias, gleditschias, tulip-trees, and many other American genera,
together with maples, ashes, planes, oaks, poplars, and other familiar
European trees represented by a variety of extinct species. If we now go to
the west coast of Greenland in 70deg N. Lat. we find abundant remains of a
flora of the same general {73} type as that of Oeninghen but of a more
northern character. We have a sequoia identical with one of the species
found at Oeninghen, a chestnut, salisburia, liquidambar, sassafras, and
even a magnolia. We have also seven species of oaks, two planes, two vines,
three beeches, four poplars, two willows, a walnut, a plum, and several
shrubs supposed to be evergreens; altogether 137 species, mostly well and
abundantly preserved!

But even further north, in Spitzbergen, in 78deg and 79deg N. Lat. and one
of the most barren and inhospitable regions on the globe, an almost equally
rich fossil flora has been discovered including several of the Greenland
species, and others peculiar, but mostly of the same genera. There seem to
be no evergreens here except coniferae, one of which is identical with the
swamp-cypress (_Taxodium distichum_) now found living in the Southern
United States! There are also eleven pines, two Libocedrus, two sequoias,
with oaks, poplars, birches, planes, limes, a hazel, an ash, and a walnut;
also water-lilies, pond-weeds, and an iris--altogether about a hundred
species of flowering plants. Even in Grinnell Land, within 8-1/4 degrees of
the pole, a similar flora existed, twenty-five species of fossil plants
having been collected by the last Arctic expedition, of which eighteen were
identical with the species from other Arctic localities. This flora
comprised poplars, birches, hazels, elms, viburnums, and eight species of
conifers including the swamp cypress and the Norway spruce (_Pinus abies_)
which last does not now extend beyond 69-1/2deg N.

Fossil plants closely resembling those just mentioned have been fo