Nearly all the plants at Monod are contained in three layers of marl separated by two of soft sandstone. The thickness of the marls is ten feet, and vegetable matter predominates so much in some layers as to form an imperfect lignite. One bed is filled with large leaves of a species of fig (_Ficus populina_), and of a hornbeam (_Carpinus grandis_), the strength of the wind having probably been great when they were blown into the lake; whereas another contiguous layer contains almost exclusively smaller leaves, indicating, apparently, a diminished strength in the wind. Some of the upper beds at Monod abound in leaves of Proteaceæ, Cyperaceæ, and ferns, while in some of the lower ones _Sequoia, Cinnamomum,_ and _Sparganium_ are common. In one bed of sandstone the trunk of a large palm-tree was found unaccompanied by other fossils, and near Vevay, in the same series of Lower Miocene strata, the leaves of a palm of the genus _Sabal_ (Fig. 151), a genus now proper to America, were obtained. Fig. 151: Sabal major Among other genera of the same class is a _Flabellaria_ occurring near Lausanne, and a magnificent _Phœnicites_ allied to the date palm. When these plants flourished the climate must have been much hotter than now. The Alps were no doubt much lower, and the palms now found fossil in strata elevated 2000 feet above the sea grew nearly at the sea-level, as is demonstrated by the brackish-water character of some of the beds into which they were carried by winds or rivers from the adjoining coast.