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Whatever the period of time may be since some cosmic cataclysm scattered the material of our solar system in the form of a nebula, it is only a fraction of that larger and illimitable time which the evolution of the stars dimly suggests to the scientific imagination. Quaternary Holocene 500,000 years Pleistocene Tertiary Pliocene 5,500,000 years or Miocene Cenozoic Oligocene Eocene
So far as the Upper Eocene and the Miocene Mammalian Faunae are comparable, their relations are such as in no way to oppose the hypothesis that the older are the progenitors of the more recent forms, while, in some cases, they distinctly favour that hypothesis.
In thus inverting what might at first seem to be the more natural order of historical research, we must bear in mind that each of the periods above enumerated, even the shortest, such as the Post-tertiary, or the Pliocene, Miocene, or Eocene, embrace a succession of events of vast extent, so that to give a satisfactory account of what we already know of any one of them would require many volumes.
Layers of trachytic tuff are interstratified with the deposits of sand, clay, and lignite of the formation known as that of the Brown Coal of Miocene age which underlies nearly the whole of the volcanic district on both sides of the Rhine near Bonn, thus showing that volcanic action had already commenced in that part to some extent; but it does not appear from Dr.
It has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that certain species of infusoria found in the chalk are still existing, and, on the other hand, the Miocene and Older Pliocene deposits often contain the remains of mammalia, reptiles, and fish, exclusively of extinct species.
Again, all the great groups of the Ruminants, the Bovidae, Antilopidae, Camelopardalidae, and Cervidae, are represented in the Miocene epoch, and so are the Camels. The Upper Eocene Anoplotherium, which is intercalary between the Pigs and the Tragulidae, has only two or, at most, three toes.
Nor is it of any great importance. Sufficient remains to enable us to form a just conception of the magnitude both as regards thickness and extent of the erupted matter of the Miocene period over the North-east of Ireland and adjoining submerged tracts, and of the magnitude of the volcanic operations necessary for the production of such masses.
The earliest foldings of their strata belong to the close of the Jurassic, but it was not until the end of the Miocene that the line of mountainous islands and the heavy sediments which had been deposited on their submerged flanks were crushed into a continuous mountain chain. Thick Pliocene beds upon their sides prove that they were depressed to near sea level during the later Tertiary.
If ever the whole series should be complete, we must be prepared to find the marine equivalent of the Bembridge beds, or the uppermost Eocene, passing by imperceptible shades into the inferior beds of the overlying Miocene strata.
The first glimpses of the world are always like those which the book of Genesis gives us; like those which your own continent gives us. As it was 400 years ago in America, so it was in North Africa and in Asia 4000 years ago, or 40,000 for aught I know. Nay, if anyone should ask And why not 400,000 years ago, on Miocene continents long sunk beneath the Tropic sea?
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