[footnote] *['Medals of Creation', vol. i., ch. v., etc. 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 278, 392.] — Tr.
In the middle tertiary period we again find palms and Cycadeae fully established, and finally a great similarity with our existing flora, manifested in the sudden and abundant occurrence of our pines and firs, Cupuliferae, maples, and poplars. The dicotyledonous stems found in lignite are occasionally distinguished by colossal size and great age. In the trunk of a tree found at Bonn, Noggerath counted 792 annual rings.*
[footnote] *Buckland, 'Geology', p. 509.
In the north of France, at Yseux, near Abbeville, oaks have been discovered in the turf moors of the Somme which measured fourteen feet in diameter, a thickness which is very remarkable in the Old Continent and without the tropics. According to Goppert's excellent investigations, which, it is hoped, may soon be illustrated by plates, it would appear that "all the amber of the Baltic comes from p 284 a coniferous tree, which, to judge by the still extant remains of wood and the bark at different ages, approaches very nearly to our white and red pines, although forming a distinct species. The amber-tree of the ancient world ('Pinites succifer') abounded in resin to a degree far surpassing that manifested by any extant coniferous tree; for not only were large masses of amber deposited in and upon the bark, but also in the wood itself, following the course of the medullary rays, which, together with ligneous cells, are still discernible under the microscope, and peripherally between the rings, being some times both yellow and white."
"Among the vegetable forms inclosed in amber are male and femald blossoms of our native needle-wood trees and Cupuliferae, while fragments which are recognized as belonging to thuia, cupressus, ephedera, and castania vesca, blended with those of junipers and firs, indicate a vegetation different from that of the coasts and plains of the Baltic."*
[footnote] *{The forests of amber-pines, 'Pinites succifer', were in the southeastern part of what is now the bed of the Baltic, in about 55 degrees N. lat., and 37 degrees E. long. The different colors of amber are derived from local chemical admixture. The amber contains fragments of vegetable matter, and from these it has been ascertained tht the amber-pine forests contained four other species of pine (besides the 'Pinites succier'), several cypresses, yews, and junipers, with oaks, poplars, beeches, etc. — altogether forty-eight species of trees and shrubs, constituting a flora of North American chracter. There are also some ferns, mosses, fungi, and liverworts. See Professor Goppert, 'Geol. Trans.', 1845. Insects, spiders, small crustaceans, leaves, and fragments of vegetable tissue, are imbedded in some of the masses. Upward of 800 species of insects have been observed; most of them belong to species, and even genera, that appear to be distinct from any now known, but others are nearly related to indigenous species, and some are identical with existing forms, that inhabit more southern climes. — 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 242, etc.] — Tr.
We have now passed through the whole series of formations comprised in the geological portion of the present work, proceeding from the oldest erupted rock and the most ancient sedimentary formations to the alluvial land on which are scattered those large masses of rock, the causes of whose general distribution have been so long and variously discussed, and which are, in my opinion, to be ascribed rather to the penetration and violent outpouring of pent-up waters by the elevation of mountain chains than to the motion of floating blocks of ice.*
[footnote] *Leopold von Buch, in the 'Abhandl. der Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin', 1814-15, s. 161; and in Poggend., 'Annalen', bd. ix., s. 575; Elie de Beaumont, in the 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles', t. xix., p. 60.
The most ancient structures of the transition formation p 285 with which we are acquainted are slate and graywacke, which contain some remains of sea weeds from the silurian or cambrian sea. On what did these so-called 'most ancient' formations rest, if gneiss and mica schist must be regarded as changed sedimentary strata? Dare we hazard a conjecture on that which can not be an object of actual geognostic observation? According to an ancient Indian myth, the earth is borne up by an elephant, who in his turn is supported by a gigantic tortoise, in order that he may not fall; but it is not permitted to the credulous Brahmins to inquire on what the tortoise rests. We venture here upon a somewhat similar problem, and are prepared to meet with opposition in our endeavors to arrive at its soluion. In the first formation of the planets, as we stated in the astronomical portion of this work, it is probable that nebulous rings revolving round the sun were agglomerated into spheroids, and consolidated by a gradual condensation proceeding from the exterior toward the center. What we term the ancient silurian strata are thus only the upper portions of the solid crust of the earth. The erupted rocks which have broken through and upheaved these strata have been elevated from depths that are wholly inaccessible to our research; they must, therefore, have existed under the silurian strata, and been composed of the same association of minerals which we term granite, augite, and quartzose porphyry, when they are made known to us by eruption through the surface. Basing our inquiries on analogy, we may assume that the substances which fill up deep fissures and traverse the sedimentary strata are merely the ramifications of a lower deposit. The foci of active volcanoes are situated at enormous depths, and judging from the remarkable fragments which I have found in various parts of the earth incrusted in lava currents, I should deem it more than probable tht a primordial granite rock forms the substratum of the whole stratified edifice of fossil remains.*
[footnote] *See Elie de Beaumont, 'Descr. Geol. de la France', t. i., p. 65; Beaudant, 'Geologie', 1844, p. 269.