One of the beds is a perfect mat of the
debris of a coniferous tree, called by Heer Sequoia Couttsiae, intermixed with
leaves of ferns. The same Sequoia (before mentioned as a Hempstead fossil) is
spread through all parts of the formation, its cones, and seeds, and branches of
every age being preserved. It is a species supplying a link between Sequoia
Langsdorfii (see Figure 153) and Sequoia Sternbergi, the widely spread fossil
representatives of the two living trees Sequoia sempervirens and Sequoia
gigantea (or Wellingtonia), both now confined to California. Another bed is full
of the large rhizomes of ferns, while two others are rich in dicotyledonous
leaves. In all, Professor Heer enumerates forty-nine species of plants, twenty
of which are common to the Miocene beds of the Continent, a majority of them
being characteristic of the Lower Miocene. The new species, also of Bovey, are
allied to plants of the older Miocene deposits of Switzerland, Germany, and
other Continental countries. The grape-stones of two species of vine occur in
the clays, and leaves of the fig and seeds of a water-lily.
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