In Europe, in the lower part of the Upper Cretaceous of Bohemia (_Cenomanian_), have been found some leaves which indicate the beginning of this change. These have been referred to Cæsalpinias or Brasilettos, pod-bearing trees of India and tropical America, _Aralias_ or Ginsengs, _Magnolias_, Laurels, an Ivy, and a peculiar and uncertain genus (_Credneria_). With these are noble palms, both of the types with pinnate and palmate leaves, and trees allied to the Giant _Sequoias_ of California, and to the Araucarian pines of the southern hemisphere. (See Frontispiece to this Chapter.) These ancient Cretaceous forests of Eastern Europe are compared by Saporta with those which now live in the warmer portions of China or in South America—truly a marvellous change from the sombre and uniform vegetation by which they seem to have been immediately preceded. A still further development of modern vegetation takes place in the next or highest member of the Cretaceous, the Maestricht beds (_Senonian_), where we find a crowd of modern types. On this great change Count Saporta remarks with truth that there seem to have been periods of pause and of activity in the introduction of plants. The Jurassic period was one of inactivity; and a new and vigorous evolution, as he regards it, is introduced in the middle of the Cretaceous. This new and grand elevation of the vegetable kingdom in the Cretaceous age was not local merely. In Moravia, in the Hartz, in Belgium and France, even in Greenland, the same great renewing of the face of the earth was in progress. In America it was proceeding on a grand scale, and seems to have set in earlier than in Europe.[71] In the Dakota group of the West, one of the lower members of the Cretaceous, and covering a vast area, a rich angiospermous flora has been discovered by Hayden, and described by Lesquereux and Newberry, and beds of coal have been formed from its remains. In Vancouver’s Island in British Columbia, Cretaceous coal measures occur, comparable in value and in the excellence of the fuel they afford with those of the true coal formation. Some of the beds of coal are eight feet in thickness, and the shales associated with them abound in leaves of exogenous trees generally similar to those still living in America. In these beds are also found mineralized trunks, which present under the microscope the familiar structures of our oaks, birches, and other modern trees. Thus all over the northern hemisphere the elevation of the land out of the waters of the great Cretaceous subsidence was signalized by a development of noble and exuberant forest vegetation, of the types still extant. The following list of families found in the Cretaceous, after Saporta, will show the botanist how fully our modern Exogens are represented:— APETALÆ. _Myricaceæ._ _Cupuliferæ._ _Betulaceæ._ _Salicaceæ._ _Moreæ._ _Proteaceæ._ _Lauraceæ._ GAMOPETALÆ. _Apocynaceæ._ _Ericaceæ._ _Ebenaceæ._ _Myrsineæ._