. The testimony of the rocks; . ACER TRILOBATUM.* (Miocene of (Eningen.) age, I told him, ere yet the optical lapidary had preparedthem for examination, that if they exhibited the coniferous * Leaf of a tree allied to the maple. 74 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL structure, they might belong to any geologic period from thetimes of the Lower Old Red Sandstone downwards; butthat if they manifested in their tissue the dicotyledonouscharacter, they could not be older than the times of theTertiary. On submitting them in thin slices to the micro-scope, they were found to exhibit the peculiar dicotyledonous Fig.
. The testimony of the rocks; . ACER TRILOBATUM.* (Miocene of (Eningen.) age, I told him, ere yet the optical lapidary had preparedthem for examination, that if they exhibited the coniferous * Leaf of a tree allied to the maple. 74 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL structure, they might belong to any geologic period from thetimes of the Lower Old Red Sandstone downwards; butthat if they manifested in their tissue the dicotyledonouscharacter, they could not be older than the times of theTertiary. On submitting them in thin slices to the micro-scope, they were found to exhibit the peculiar dicotyledonous Fig. ULMUS BRONNII.* (Miocene of Bohemia.) structure as strongly as the oak or chestnut. And Lieu-tenant Newbolds researches in the deposit in which theyoccur has since demonstrated, on stratigraphical evidence,that not only does it belong to the great Tertiary division, * Leaf of a tree allied to the chn. HISTORY OF PLANTS. 75 but also to one of the comparatively modern formations ofthe Tertiary. The earlier flora of this Tertiary division presents anaspect widely difierent from that of any of the previousones. The ferns and their allies sink into their existingproportions; nor do the coniferse, previously so abundant,occupy any longer a prominent place. On the other hand,the dicotyledonous herbs and trees, previously so inconspic-uous in creation, are largely developed. Trees of thoseAmentiferous orders to which the oak, the hazel, the beech,and the plane belong, were perhaps not less abundant in theEocene woods than in those of the present time: they weremingled with trees of the Laurel
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