Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/77

] the highly-ornamented seeds which lie buried in the sand and mud formed by the water.

This flora is identified by Professor Heer with that of the lower Meiocenes of France and Switzerland.

A flora similar to that of Bovey Tracey occurs in the island of Mull under lava and volcanic ash, consisting of the red wood (Sequoia Langsdorfii), hazel (Corylus grossidentatus), plane, and several other trees. It is also met with in the lignites under the basalts of Antrim. A fir tree (Pinus Plutonis) closely allied to the cluster pine, a cypress, and a gum tree have been identified from this deposit by Mr. Baily, and some of the leaves strongly resemble the buckthorn, beech, and an evergreen oak. In another place in Ireland, near Shane's Castle, Lough Neagh, the ash-beds have yielded the red wood and a species of plane (Platanus aceroides).

The vegetation hitherto recorded in the British Isles is but an insignificant fragment of the extraordinary flora revealed by the labours of Professor Heer and others on the mainland of Europe. The Meiocene forests of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy comprised forms now met with only in widely remote parts of the earth, and are of singular interest because of their testimony, not merely as to climate, but also to a closer