The Prehistoric World: or, Vanished Races, page 39 by E.A. Allen
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e distribution of similar animals and plants in the Miocene time. All the chief botanists are agreed that the north Polar region was the center from which plants peculiar to the Eocene and Miocene epochs spread into both Europe and America.<29> We may mention that the famous big trees of California are simply remnants of a wide-spread growth of these trees in Miocene times. They can be found in a fossil state at various places in British America, in Greenland, and in Europe. They are supposed to have originated somewhere in the north, and spread by these land connections we have mentioned into both Europe and America. But this is not the only tree that grew in the Miocene forests of both continents. The magnolia, tulip-tree, and swamp cypress are other instances.<30> Eleven species, growing in the Rocky Mountain regions in Rocene times, found their way to Europe in the Miocene times,<31> driving before them the plants of a tropical growth that had hitherto flourished in England. Now this implies land connection between the two continents. Furthermore, animals both large and small are found common to the two countries.<32> The climate over what is now the North Temperate Zone, and even further. north, must have been delightful. There is ample testimony to this effect in the rich vegetative remains over wide areas.
In Spitzbergen, within twelve degrees of the pole, where now a dwarf willow and a few herbaceous plants form the only vegetation, and the ground is most of the time covered with snow and ice, there were growing, in Miocene times, no less than ninety-five species of trees, including yews, hazels, elders, beech, elms, and others.<33> But it is in the Miocene forests of the continent of Europe where we meet with evidence of a singularly mild climate.
There were at least eleven species of palms growing in Switzerland; and one variety of them grew as far north as Northern Germany.<34>
We can not give a list of all the species. On the one hand, there wer