Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments / by Sir Charles Lyell.

  • Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797-1875.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of geology, or, The ancient changes of the earth and its inhabitants as illustrated by geological monuments / by Sir Charles Lyell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    between the petals of the Miocene species and those of the living Acer rubrum, fig. 184.* In like manner the fossil specimen, fig. 186. b, shows how much more pointed were the winged appendages of the seed-vessels than are those of the most nearly allied living species, fig. 184. a. Among the genera which abounded in the Miocene period in Eu- rope is the plane-tree, Platanus, the fossil species being considered by Heer to come nearer to the American P. occidentalis than to P. orientalis of Greece and Asia Minor. In some of the fossil specimens the male flowers are preserved. Among other points of resemblance with the living plane-trees, as we see them in the parks and squares of London, fossil fragments of the trunk are met with, having pieces of their bark peeling off. No leaves of the beech-tree or of the chestnut have yet been found in any Mio- cene strata of Switzerland, although in formations of the same age in Germany, leaves of one of them, namely, the beech, have been detected. Many species of the laurel tribe characterize the flora both of the Upper and Lower Miocene strata in Switzer- land and Germany, especially the cinnamon (see fig. 188.). The leaves of this genus are easily recognizable, and often serve as useful guides to the geologist. The fruit also and the flower are found at CEningen. Fig. 188. Fig. 189. Fig. 187. Platanus aceroides. Gopp. Heer, PI. 88. figs. 5-8. Size § diam. Upper Miocene, (Enin gen. a. leaf. b. the core of a bundle of pericarps. c. single fruit or pericarp, nat. size. Cinnamomum polymorphum, Ad. Brong. a. leaf. b. flower, nat. size. Heer, PI. 93. fig. 28. Upper and Lower Miocene. a. ripe fruit of Cinnamomum polymorphum, from CEningen. Heer, PI. 94. fig. 14. b. fruit of recent Cinnamomum camphora of Japan. Heer, PI. 152. fig. 18... Professor Heer observes that the fruit in the fossil, fig. 189. a, is more oval in shape than that of the recent Japanese plant, C. cam- phora, b, fig. 189., which comes nearest to it, and that the peduncle is not thickened at its upper end as in the living one. * Heer, vol. iii. p. 197.