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In the lower quarry eleven beds are mentioned, in which, as in the upper, both land and fresh-water plants and many insects occur. In the 6th, reckoning from the top, many plants have been obtained, such as Liquidambar, Daphnogene, Podogonium, and Ulmus, together with tortoises, besides the bones and teeth of a ruminant quadruped, named by H. von Meyer Palaeomeryx eminens.
Some trees maintain such a continuous show of interest and beauty that it is difficult to say on any day, "Now is this tulip or this oak at its very finest!" Again, the spring redness of the swamp maple is hardly less vivid than its mature coloring of the fall. But as to the liquidambar, or sweet-gum, there can be no question.
This flora is remarkable for its resemblance to the European Miocene flora. The liquidambar, as well as several poplars and willows, cannot be distinguished from those of Oeningen; the same is true of an Elm, a Carpinus, and others.
I behold vegetable forms of tropic aspect, with broad shining foliage the Sabal palm, the anona, the water-loving tupelo, the catalpa with its large trumpet flowers, the melting liquidambar, and the wax-leaved mangolia.
No. 9 is called the insect-bed, a layer only a few inches thick, which, when exposed to the frost, splits into leaves as thin as paper. In these thin laminae plants such as Liquidambar, Daphnogene, and Glyptostrobus, occur, with innumerable insects in a wonderful state of preservation, usually found singly.
The pin-oak, the elm, the sweet-gum, or liquidambar, the ginkgo, and a half-dozen or more beautiful and sturdy trees, do admirably for street planting, and ought to be better known and much more freely used. I have seen many rare orchids brought thousands of miles and petted into a curious bloom indeed, often more curious than beautiful.
The preceding Cretaceous period has furnished to Carruthers in Europe a fossil fruit like that of the Sequoia gigantea of the famous groves, associated with pines of the same character as those that accompany the present tree; has furnished to Heer, from Greenland, two more Sequoias, one of them identical with a tertiary species, and one nearly allied to Sequoia Langsdorfii, which in turn is a probable ancestor of the common California redwood; has furnished to Newberry and Lesquereux in North America the remains of another ancient Sequoia, a Glyptostrobus, a Liquidambar which well represents our sweet-gum-tree, oaks analogous to living ones, leaves of a plane-tree, which are also in the Tertiary, and are scarcely distinguishable from our own Platanus occidentalis, of a magnolia and a tulip-tree, and "of a sassafras undistinguishable from our living species."
This assemblage of plants indicates a warm climate, but not so subtropical an one as that of the Upper Miocene period, which will presently be considered. Liquidambar europaeum, var. trilobatum, A. Br. Leaf, half natural size. b. Part of same, natural size. c. Fruit, natural size. d. Seed, natural size.
Years ago I first made acquaintance with the liquidambar, as it ought always to be called, one wet September day, when an old tree-lover took me out on his lawn to see the rain accentuate the polish on the starry leaves and drip from the little many-pointed balls.
I found that day that a camera would work quite well under an umbrella, and I obtained also a mind-negative that will last, I believe, as long as I can think of trees. The next experience was in another state, where a quaint character, visited on business, struck hands with me on tree-love, and took me to see his pet liquidambar at the edge of a mill-pond.
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