Heer has mentioned several species which are common to this Alum Bay flora and that of Monte Bolca, near Verona, so celebrated for its fossil fish, and where the strata contain nummulites and other Middle Eocene fossils. He has particularly alluded to _Aralia primigenia_ (of which genus a fruit has since been found by Mr. Mitchell at Bournemouth), _Daphnogene Veronensis,_ and _ Ficus granadilla,_ as among the species common to and characteristic of the Isle of Wight and Italian Eocene beds; and he observes that in the flora of this period these forms of a temperate climate which constitute a marked feature in the European Miocene formations, such as the willow, poplar, birch, alder, elm, hornbeam, oak, fir, and pine, are wanting. The American types are also absent, or much more feebly represented than in the Miocene period, although fine specimens of the fan-palm (_Sabal_) have been found in these Eocene clays at Studland. The number of exotic forms which are common to the Eocene and Miocene strata of Europe, like those to be alluded to in the sequel which are common to the Eocene and Cretaceous fauna, demonstrate the remoteness of the times in which the geographical distribution of living plants originated. A great majority of the Eocene genera have disappeared from our temperate climates, but not the whole of them; and they must all have exerted some influence on the assemblages of species which succeeded them. Many of these last occurring in the Upper Miocene are indeed so closely allied to the flora now surviving as to make it questionable, even in the opinion of naturalists opposed to the doctrine of transmutation, whether they are not genealogically related the one to the other. LOWER EOCENE FORMATIONS, ENGLAND. London Clay, C.1, Table—This formation underlies the preceding, and sometimes attains a thickness of 500 feet. It consists of tenacious brown and bluish-grey clay, with layers of concretions called septaria, which abound chiefly in the brown clay, and are obtained in sufficient numbers from sea-cliffs near Harwich, and from shoals off the coast of Essex and the Isle of Sheppey, to be used for making Roman cement. The total number of British fossil mollusca known at present (January, 1870) in this formation are 254, of which 166 are peculiar, or not found in other Eocene beds in this country. The principal localities of fossils in the London clay are Highgate Hill, near London, the Island of Sheppey at the mouth of the Thames, and Bognor on the Sussex coast. Out of 133 fossil shells, Mr. Prestwich found only 20 to be common to the Calcaire Grossier (from which 600 species have been obtained), while 33 are common to the “Lits Coquilliers” (p. 275), in which 200 species are known in France.