The last number of the Geological Magazine contained a translation (by Mr. J. E. Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S., of Caerleon) of two lectures by Dr. Oswald Heer, “On the Miocene Flora of the Polar Regions,” in which the author gives the results of his investigation of the fossil plant-remains from the Tertiary deposits of the north of Canada, Banksland, North Greenland, Iceland, and Spitzbergen. His examination has led him to conclude that, amongst them, there were nine large plants of the fern tribe, 78 kinds of trees, and 50 shrubs. Among these, the remains of the beech and the chestnut, like those of our own island, the silver fir, spruce fir, and Scotch fir, the white pine of Canada, the Sequoia of California, the cypress and Salisburia of Japan, the oak of temperate N. America, the poplar, plane-tree, birch, tulip-tree, the walnut, lime-tree, and magnolia have left their remains where they had grown, attesting a once temperate climate in Tertiary times, where now fields of snow and ice (once believed to be eternal) cover the length and breadth of the land.

The study of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, as well as that of their animal remains, has been, and will be for a long time to come, a subject of very considerable interest, and one that has, especially during the last few years, attracted the keen attention of several experienced and conscientious observers. Many have been the observations assembled in connection with the direct order of superposition and relative age of the various rocks composing the Cambrian and Lowest Silurian deposits, as well as in seeking out all the data that could be obtained, so as to enable the palæontologist to attempt a correct diagnosis of the very earliest known ancestors of many of our fossils. The discoveries effected by Sir W. Logan amongst the ‘Laurentian’ rocks of North America (as stated by Sir R. I. Murchison) “constitute the foundation stones of all Paæeozoic deposits in the crust of the globe wherever their formations are known;” and with what keen interest has not the Eozoon been welcomed and elaborated—the oldest animal known!

Europe during the Tertiary period was invaded by successive races of animals driven from their head quarters by press of numbers or by famine, or allured by some modification of circumstances that was specially adapted for their well-being, in precisely the same way as it was subsequently invaded by successive races of men. Eocene Mammals were followed by Miocene, and those again by Pliocene, Pliocene by the Pre-glacial division of the Pleistocene, and, finally, the latter by the Post-glacial or Quaternary, in obedience to the same natural laws which compelled the Stone- to vanish away before the Bronze-folk, and the Kelt to yield to the Teuton. The parallel between the conquest of Europe by the ancient mammalia and that by man is most exact. In both cases the conquering race absorbed a greater or less proportion of the conquered. Thus the Hippopotamus major and Rhinoceros hemitæchus of the Pliocenes of Italy lingered on in France and Germany in association with, or, as it were, in a kind of helotage to, the Post-glacial fauna, just as the Kelt still survives in the midst of his Teutonic conquerors in Britain. In both there is the same uncertainty as to the ancient head-quarters of each race, except the last one, from which the present inhabitants of Western Europe are descended.