British floras, that which occurs in the southwest of Ireland, and corresponds with the flora of the northwest of Spain and the Pyrenees,-had been introduced into the country as early, perhaps, as the times of the Miocene. Be this, however, as it may, there can rest no doubt on the great antiquity of the prevailing trees of our indigenous forests.

But

The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotch fir, all lived, I repeat, in what is now Britain, ere the last great depression of the land. The gigantic northern elephant and rhinoceros, extinct for untold ages, forced their way through their tangled branches; and the British tiger and hyæna harbored in their thickets. Cuvier framed an argument for the fixity of species on the fact that the birds and beasts embalmed in the catacombs were identical in every respect with the animals of the same kinds that live, now. what, it has been asked, was a brief period of three thousand years, compared with the geologic ages? or how could any such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? It is, however, to no such narrow basis we can refer in the case of these woods. All human history is comprised in the nearer corner of the immense period which they measure out; and yet, from their first appearance in creation till now they have not altered a single fibre. And such, on this point, is the invariable testimony of Paleontologic science, ― testimony so invariable, that no great Palæontologist was ever yet an asserter of the development hypothesis. With the existing trees of our indigenous woods it is probable that in even these early times a considerable portion of the herbs of our recent flora would have been associated, though their remains, less fitted for preservation, have failed to leave distinct trace behind them. We at least know generally, that with each succeeding period there appeared a more extensively useful and various vege

tation than that which had gone before. I have already referred to the sombre, unproductive character of the earliest terrestrial flora with which we are acquainted. It was a flora unfitted, apparently, for the support of either graminivorous bird or herbivorous quadruped. The singularly profuse vegetation of the Coal Measures was, with all its wild luxuriance, of a resembling cast. So far as appears, neither flock nor herd could have lived on its greenest and richest plains; nor does even the flora of the Oolite seem to have been in the least suited for the purposes of the shepherd or herdsman. Not until we enter on the Tertiary periods do we find floras amid which man might have profitably labored as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of fields, or a keeper of flocks and herds. Nay, there are whole orders and families of plants of the very first importance to man which do not appear until late in even the Tertiary ages. Some degree of doubt must always attach to merely negative evidence; but Agassiz, a geologist whose statements must be received with respect by every student of the science, finds reason to conclude that the order of the Rosacea,.—an order more important to the gardener than almost any other, and to which the apple, the pear, the quince, the cherry, the plum, the peach, the apricot, the victorine, the almond, the raspberry, the strawberry, and the various brambleberries belong, together with all the roses and the potentillas, was introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man. And the true grasses, a still more important order, which, as the cornbearing plants of the agriculturist, feed at the present time at least two thirds of the human species, and in their humbler varieties form the staple food of the grazing animals, scarce appear in the fossil state at all. They are peculiarly plants of the human period.

Let me instance one other family of which the fossil bot

anist has not yet succeeded in finding any trace in even the Tertiary deposits, and which appears to have been specially created for the gratification of human sense. Unlike the Rosacea, it exhibits no rich blow of color, or tempting show of luscious fruit;-it does not appeal very directly to either the sense of taste or of sight: but it is richly odorif erous; and, though deemed somewhat out of place in the garden for the last century and more, it enters largely into the composition of some of our most fashionable perfumes. I refer to the Labiate family, a family to which the lavenders, the mints, the thymes, and the hyssops belong, with basil, rosemary, and marjorum,—all plants of "gray renown," as Shenstone happily remarks in his description of the herbal of his "Schoolmistress."

"Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak,

That in her garden sipped the silvery dew,

Where no vain flower disclosed a gaudy streak,

But herbs for use and physic not a few,

Of gray renown within those borders grew.
The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme,

And fragrant balm, and sage of sober hue.

"And marjorum sweet in shepherd's posic found,

And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom

Shall be crewhile in arid bundles bound,

To lurk amid her labors of the loom,

And crown her kerchiefs clean with meikle rare perfume.

"And here trim rosemary, that whilom crowned

The daintiest garden of the proudest peer,

Ere, driven from its envied site, it found

A sacred shelter for its branches here,

Where, edged with gold, its glittering skirts appear,
With horehound gray, and mint of softer green."

All the plants here enumerated belong to the labiate family; which, though unfashionable even in Shenstone's days, have still their products favorably received in the very best society.

The rosemary, whose banishment from the gardens of the great he specially records, enters largely in the composition of eau de Cologne. Of the lavenders, one species (Lavendula vera) yields the well known lavender oil, and another (L. latifolio) the spike oil. The peppermint (Meantha viridus) furnishes the essence so popular under that name among our confectioners; and one of the most valued perfumes of the East (next to the famous Attar, a product of the Rosaceae) is the oil of the Patchouly plant, another of the labiates. Let me indulge, ere quitting this part of the subject, in a single remark. There have been classes of religionists, not wholly absent from our own country, and well known on the Continent, who have deemed it a merit to deny themselves every pleasure of sense, however innocent and delicate. The excellent but mistaken Pascal refused to look upon a lovely landscape; and the Port Royalist nuns remarked, somewhat simply for their side of the argument, that they seemed as if warring with Providence, seeing that the favors which he was abundantly showering upon them, they, in obedience to the stern law of their lives, were continually rejecting. But it is better, surely, to be on the side of Providence against Pascal and the nuns, than on the side of Pascal and the nuns against Providence. The great Creator, who has provided so wisely and abundantly for all his creatures, knows what is best for us, infinitely better than we do ourselves; and there is neither sense nor merit, surely, in churlishly refusing to partake of that ample entertainment, sprinkled with delicate perfumes, garnished with roses, and crowned with the most delicious fruit, which we now know was not only specially prepared for us, but also got ready, as nearly as we can judge, for the appointed hour of our appearance at the feast. This we also know, that when the Divine Man came into the world, unlike the Port Royalists, he did not refuse the temperate use of

any of these luxuries, not even of that "ointment of spikenard, very precious" (a product of the labiate family), with which Mary anointed his feet.

Though it may at first seem a little out of place, let us anticipate here, for the sake of the illustration which it affords, one of the sections of the other great division of our subject, that which treats of the fossil animals. Let us run briefly over the geologic history of insects, in order that we may

CYCLOPHTHALMUS BUCKLANDI.

(A Fossil Scorpion of the Coal Measures of Bohemia.)

mark the peculiar light which it casts on the character of the ancient floras. No insects have yet been detected in the Silurian or Old Red Sandstone Systems. They first appear amid the hard, dry, flowerless vegetation of the Coal Measures, and in genera suited to its character. Among these the scorpions take a prominent place, -carnivorous arach