It is a remarkable fact in geological chronology that the culmination of the vegetable kingdom antedates that of the animal. The placental mammals, the highest group of the animal kingdom, are not known till the beginning of the Eocene Tertiary. The dicotyledonous Angiosperms, which correspond to them in the vegetable kingdom, occur far earlier--in the beginning of the Upper Cretaceous or close of the Lower Cretaceous. The reign of cycads and pines holds throughout the Lower Cretaceous, but at the close of that age there is a sudden incoming of the higher plants, and a proportionate decrease, more especially of the cycads. I have already referred to the angiospermous wood supposed to be Devonian, but I fear to rest any conclusion on this isolated fact. Beyond this, the earliest indications of plants of this class have been found in the Lower Cretaceous. Many years ago Heer described and figured the leaves of a poplar (_Populus primæva_) from the supposed Lower Cretaceous of Komé, in Greenland (Fig. 68). Two species, a _Sterculia_ and a _Laurus_ or _Salix_, occur among fossils described by me in the upper part of the Kootanie series of the Rocky Mountains, and Fontaine has recently found in the Potomac group of Virginia--believed to be of Neocomian age--several angiospermous species (_Sassafras_, _Menispermites_, _Sapindus_, _Aralia_, _Populus_, &c.) mixed with a rich flora of cycads and pines. These are the early forerunners of the modern angiospermous flora; but so far as known they do not occur below the Cretaceous, and in its lower portions only very rarely. When, however, we ascend into the Upper Cretaceous, whether of Europe or America, there is a remarkable incoming of the higher plants, under generic forms similar to those now existing. This is, in truth, the advent of the modern flora of the temperate regions of the earth. A very interesting tabular view of its early distribution is given by Ward, in the "American Journal of Science" for 1884, of which the following is a synopsis, with slight emendations. I may add that the new discoveries made since 1884 would probably tend to increase the proportionate number of dicotyledons in the newer groups. Dicotyledonous Trees in the Cretaceous. _Upper Senonian_ 179 species. (Fox Hill group of America.) _Lower Senonian_ 81 species. Upper white chalk of Europe; Fort Pierre group of America; coal-measures of Nanaimo? _Turonian_ 20 species. Lower white chalk; New Jersey marls; Belly R. group. _Cenomanian._ 357 species. (Chalk-marl, greensand, and Gault, Niobrara and Dakota groups of America); Dunvegan group of Canada; Amboy clays of New Jersey.