Leaves of plants supposed to belong to the order Proteaceæ have been obtained partly from Œningen and partly from the lacustrine formation of the same age at Locle in the Jura. They have been referred to the genera Banksia, Grevillea, Hakea, and Persoonia. Of Hakea there is the impression of a supposed seed-vessel, with its characteristic thick stalk and seeds, but as the fruit is without structure, and has not yet been found attached to the same stem as the leaf, the proof is incomplete.

To whatever family the foliage hitherto regarded as proteaceous by many able palæontologists may eventually be shown to belong, we must be careful not to question their affinity to that order of plants on those geographical considerations which have influenced some botanists. The nearest living Proteaceæ now feel the in Abyssinia in lat. 20° N., but the greatest number are confined to the Cape and Australia. The ancestors, however, of the Œningen fossils ought not to be looked for in such distant regions, but from that European land which in Lower Miocene times bore trees with similar foliage, and these had doubtless an Eocene source, for cones admitted by all botanists to be proteaceous have been met with in one division of that older Tertiary group [(see Fig. 206]). The source of these last, again, must not be sought in the antipodes, for in the white chalk of Aix-la-Chapelle leaves like those of Grevillea and other proteaceous genera have been found in abundance, and, as we shall see [(p. 304)] in a most perfect state of preservation. All geologists agree that the distribution of the Cretaceous land and sea had scarcely any connection with the present geography of the globe.

In the same beds with the supposed Proteaceæ there occurs at Locle a fan-palm of the American type Sabal (for genus see Fig. 151), a genus which ranges throughout the low country near the sea from the Carolinas to Florida and Louisiana. Among the Coniferæ of Upper Miocene age is found a deciduous cypress nearly allied to the Taxodium distichum of North America, and a Glyptostrobus (Fig. 144), very like the Japanese G. heterophyllus, now common in our shrubberies.

Before the appearance of Heer’s work on the Miocene Flora of Switzerland, Unger and Goppert had already pointed out the large proportion of living North American genera which distinguished the vegetation of the Miocene period in Central Europe. Next in number, says Heer, to these American forms at Œningen the European genera preponderate, the Asiatic ranking in the third, the African in the fourth, and the Australian in the fifth degree. The American forms are more numerous than in the Italian Pliocene flora, and the whole vegetation indicates a warmer climate than the Pliocene, though not so high a temperature as that of the older or Lower Miocene period.

The conclusions drawn from the insects are for the most part in perfect harmony with those derived from the plants, but they have a somewhat less tropical and less American aspect, the South European types being more numerous. On the whole, the insect fauna is richer than that now inhabiting any part of Europe. No less than 844 species are reckoned by Heer from the Œningen beds alone, the number of specimens which he has examined being 5080. The entire list of Swiss species from the Upper and Lower Miocene together amount to 1322. Almost all the living families of Coleoptera are represented, but, as we might have anticipated from the preponderance of arborescent and ligneous plants, the wood-eating beetles play the most conspicuous part, the Buprestidæ and other long-horned beetles being particularly abundant.

The patterns and some remains of the colours both of Coleoptera and Hemiptera are preserved at Œningen, as, for example in Harpactor (Fig. 145), in which the antennæ, one of the eyes, and the legs and wings are retained. The characters, indeed, of many of the insects are so well defined as to incline us to believe that if this class of the invertebrata were not so rare and local, they might be more useful than even the plants and shells in settling chronological points in geology.

Middle or Marine Molasse (Upper Miocene) of Switzerland.—It was before stated that the Miocene formation of Switzerland consisted of, first, the upper fresh-water molasse, comprising the lacustrine marls of Œningen; secondly, the marine molasse, corresponding in age to the faluns of Touraine; and thirdly, the lower fresh-water molasse. Some of the beds of the marine or middle series reach a height of 2470 feet above the sea. A large number of the shells are common to the faluns of Touraine, the Vienna basin, and other Upper Miocene localities. The terrestrial plants play a subordinate part in the fossiliferous beds, yet more than ninety of them are enumerated by Heer as belonging to this falunian division, and of these more than half are common to subjacent Lower Miocene beds, while a proportion of about forty-five in one hundred are common to the overlying Œningen flora. Twenty-six of the ninety-two species are peculiar.