Plant-life in the Tertiary approaches very nearly to that of the Modern World, in so far as its leading types are concerned; but in its distribution geographically it was wonderfully different from that with which we are at present familiar. For example, in the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the themes, are beds of "London clay," fall of fossil nuts; and these, instead of being hazel nuts and acorns, belong to palms allied to species now found in the Philippine Islands and Bengal, while with them are numerous cone-like fruits belonging to the Proteaceæ (banksias, silver-trees, wagenbooms, etc.), a group of trees now confined to Australia and South Africa, but which in the Northern Hemisphere had already, as stated in a previous paper, made their appearance in the Cretaceous, and were abundant in the Eocene. The state of preservation of these fruits shows that they were not drifted far; and in some beds in Hampshire, also of Eocene age, the leaves of similar plants occur along with species of fig, cinnamon, and other forms equally Australian or Indian. In America, especially in the west, there are thick and widely-distributed beds of lignite or imperfect coal of the Eocene period; but the plants found in the American Eocene are more like those of the European Miocene or the Modern American flora, a fact to which we must revert immediately. In Europe, while the Eocene plants resemble those of Australia, when we ascend into the Miocene they resemble those of America, though still retaining some of the Australian forms. In the leaf-beds of the Isle of Mull,--where beds of vegetable mould and leaves were covered up with the erupted matter of a volcano belonging to a great series of such eruptions which produced the basaltic cliffs of Antrim and of Staffa,--and at Bovey, in Devonshire, where Miocene plants have accumulated in many thick beds of lignite, the prevailing plants are sequoias or red-woods, vines, figs, cinnamons, etc. In the sandstones at the base of the Alps similar plants and also palms of American types occur. In the Upper Miocene beds of Oeningen in the Rhine valley, nearly five hundred species of plants have been found, and include such familiar forms as the maples, plane-trees, cypress, elm, and sweet-gum, more American, however, then European in their aspect. It thus appears that the Miocene flora of Europe resembles that of America at pre sent, while the Eocene flora of Europe resembles that of Australia, and the Eocene flora of America, as well as the modern, resembles the Miocene of Europe. In other words, the changes of the flora have been more rapid in Europe then in America and probably slowest of all in Australia. The Eastern Continent has thus taken the lead in rapidity of change in the Tertiary period, and it has done so in animals as well as in plants.