The Miocene formations of Switzerland are called _Molasse_ (from the French _mol_, soft), a term which is applied to a _soft_, incoherent, greenish sandstone, occupying the country between the Alps and the Jura, and they may be divided into lower, middle, and upper Miocene; the middle one is marine, the other two being fresh-water formations. The upper fresh-water Molasse is best seen at Œningen, in the Rhine valley, where, according to Sir Roderick Murchison, it ranges ten miles east and west from Berlingen, on the right bank, to Waugen and to Œningen, near Stein, on the left bank. In this formation Professor Heer enumerates twenty-one beds. No. 1, a bluish-grey marl seven feet thick, without organic remains, resting on No. 2, limestone, with fossil plants, including leaves of poplar, cinnamon, and pond-weed (_Potamogeton_). No. 3, bituminous rock, with _Mastodon angustidens_. No. 5, two or three inches thick, containing fossil Fishes. No. 9, the stone in which the skeleton of the great Salamander _Andrias Scheuchzeri_ (Fig. 158) was found. Below this, other strata with Fishes, Tortoises, the great Salamander, as before, with fresh-water Mussels, and plants. In No. 16, Sir R. Murchison obtained the fossil fox of Œningen, _Galacynus Œningensis_ (Owen). In these beds Professor Heer had, as early as 1859, determined 475 species of fossil plants, and 900 insects. The plants of the Swiss Miocene period have been obtained from a country not one-fifth the size of Switzerland, yet such an abundance of species, which Heer reckons at 3,000, does not exist in any area of equal extent in Europe. It exceeds in variety, he considers, after making every allowance for all not having existed at the same time, and from other considerations, the Southern American forests, and rivals such tropical countries as Jamaica and Brazil. European plants occupy a secondary place, while the evergreen Oaks, Maples, Poplars, and Plane-trees, Robinias, and Taxodiums of America and the smaller Atlantic islands, occupy such an important place in the fossil flora that Unger was induced to suggest the hypothesis, that, in the Miocene period the present basin of the Atlantic was dry land--and this hypothesis has been ably advocated by Heer. * * * * *