The World Before the Deluge

by Louis Figuier

“When we have once arrived at the conclusion,” he adds, “that the Nummulitic formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the composition of whose central and loftiest parts the Nummulitic strata enter bodily, could have had no existence till after the Middle Eocene period.”

The Eocene strata, Professor Ramsay thinks, extended in their day much further west, “because,” he says, “here, at the extreme edge of the chalk escarpments, you find outlying fragments of them,” from which he argues that they were originally deposited all over the Chalk as far as these points, but being formed of soft strata they were “denuded” backwards.

The Beloptera represented in [Fig. 195] are curious Belemnite-like organisms, occurring in Tertiary strata, and evidently the internal bone of a Cephalopod, having a wing-like projection or process on each side. As a genus it holds a place intermediate between the Cuttle-fish and the Belemnite.

THE MIOCENE PERIOD.

The Miocene formation is not present in England; unless we suppose, with Sir Charles Lyell, that it is represented by the Hempstead beds of the Isle of Wight.

It is on the European continent that we find the most striking characteristics of the Miocene period. In our own islands traces of it are few and far between. In the Island of Mull certain beds of shale, interstratified with basalt and volcanic ash, are described by the Duke of Argyll as of Miocene date;[90] and Miocene clay is found interstratified with bands of imperfect coal at Bovey Tracey. The vegetation which distinguished the period is a mixture of the vegetable forms peculiar to the burning climate of the present tropical Africa, with such as now grow in temperate Europe, such as Palms, Bamboos, various kinds of Laurels, Combretaceæ (Terminalia), with the grand Leguminales of warm countries (as Phaseolites, Erythrina, Bauhinia, Mimosites, Acacia); Apocyneæ analogous to the genera of our tropical regions; a Rubiacea altogether tropical (Steinhauera) mingle with some Maples, Walnut-trees, Beeches, Elms, Oaks, and Wych-elms, genera now confined to temperate and even cold countries.

Besides these, there were, during the Miocene period, mosses, mushrooms, charas, fig-trees, plane-trees, poplars, and evergreens. “During the second period of the Tertiary epoch,” says Lecoq, “the Algæ and marine Monocotyledons were less abundant than in the preceding age; the Ferns also diminished, the mass of Conifers were reduced, and the Palms multiplied in species. Some of those cited in the preceding period seem still to belong to this, and the magnificent Flabellaria, with the fine Phœnicites, which we see now for the first time, gave animation to the landscape. Among the Conifers some new genera appear; among them we distinguish Podocarpens, a southern form of vegetation of the present age. Almost all the arborescent families have their representatives in the forests of this period, where for the first time types so different are united. The waters are covered with Nymphæa Arithnæa (Brongniart); and with Myriophyllites capillifolius (Unger); Culmites animalis (Brongniart); and C. Gœpperti (Munster), spring up in profusion upon their banks, and the grand Bambusinites sepultana throws the shadow of its long articulated stem across them. Some analogous species occupy the banks of the great rivers of the New World; one Umbellifera is even indicated, by Unger, in the Pimpinellites zizioides.

Of this period date some beds of lignite resulting from the accumulation, for ages, of all these different trees. It seems that arborescent vegetation had then attained its apogee. Some Smilacites interlaced like the wild vines with these grand plants, which fell on the ground where they grew, from decay; some parts of the earth, even now, exhibit these grand scenes of vegetation. They have been described by travellers who have traversed the tropical regions, where Nature often displays the utmost luxury, under the screen of clouds which does not allow the rays of the sun to reach the earth. M. D’Orbigny cites an interesting instance which is much to the point. “I have reached a zone,” he says (speaking of Rio Chapura in South America), “where it rains regularly all the year round. We can scarcely perceive the rays of the sun, at intervals, through the screen of clouds which almost constantly veils it. This circumstance, added to the heat, gives an extraordinary development to the vegetation. The wild vines fall on all sides, in garlands, from the loftiest branches of trees whose summits are lost in the clouds.”

The fossil species of this period, to the number of 133, begin to resemble those which enrich our landscapes. Already tropical plants are associated with the vegetables of temperate climates; but they are not yet the same as existing species. Oaks grow side by side with Palms, the Birch with Bamboos, Elms with Laurels, the Maples are united to the Combretaceæ, to the Leguminales, and to the tropical Rubiaceæ. The forms of the species, belonging to temperate climates, are rather American than European.