plants, chiefly dicotyledonous,-of fishes specifically different from those which now exist, but of the existing genera,-of a fox, which only the comparative anatomist can distinguish from the recent species of this country,-and of reptiles generically akin to those of the United States. It is a curious fact that, both in its animal and vegetable productions, that part of the New World which borders upon the Atlantic in the temperate zone, from Carolina to the mouth of the St. Lawrence, still presents very much the appearance which was presented by the flora and fauna of Europe during the later Tertiary periods. It has been often remarked, in reference to human manners and the progress of civilisation, that all ages of the world may be regarded as contemporary. Man is still, in many of the South Sea Islands, what he was in our own country previous to the times of the Roman invasion; and there are provinces in Spain and Portugal in which neither the people nor the clergy have got beyond the semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. Curiously enough, in geologic history also, though in a narrower and more restricted sense, all ages are contemporary. The Galapagos have their age of reptiles, New Zealand its age of birds, and New Holland its age of marsupial quadrupeds. These countries bear now, in not a few particulars, the character of the Oolitic period in our own country. Again, on the eastern coasts of North America we are presented with a vegetation greatly resembling that of some of the later Tertiary periods; and of several of its animals the type is still more ancient. America, though emphatically the New World in relation to its discovery by civilized man, is, at least in these regions, an old world in relation to geological type; and it is the so-called Old World that is in reality the new one. 'If we compare,' says Professor Agassiz, in his late admirable work, Lake Superior, if we compare a list of the fossil trees and shrubs from the Tertiary beds of Eningen with a catalogue

of the trees and shrubs of Europe and North America, it will be seen that the differences scarcely go beyond those shown by the different floras of these continents under the same latitudes. But what is quite extraordinary and unexpected is the fact, that the European fossil plants of that locality resemble more closely the trees and shrubs which grow at present in the eastern parts of North America, than those of any other part of the world; thus allowing us to express correctly the difference between the opposite coasts of these continents, by saying that the present eastern American flora, and, I may add, the fauna also, have a more ancient character than those of Europe. The plants, especially the trees and shrubs growing in our days in the United States, are, as it were, old-fashioned; and the characteristic genera Lagoings, Chelydra, and the large Salamanders, with permanent gills, that remind us of the fossils of Eningen, are at least equally so they bear the marks of former ages.' This interesting fact,-vouched for by assuredly no mean authority,—may enable us to conceive of the general aspect of our country, so far at least as its appearance depended on its vegetation, towards the close of the Miocene period. Old Scotland exhibited features in that age greatly resembling those presented to the Puritan Fathers by the forest-covered shores of New England little more than two centuries ago. But no family of man dwelt in its solitary woods; and, as shown by its widely spread deposits of trap-tuff, and its vast beds of overlying basalt, broken by faults and shifts, its ancient volcanoes had not yet died out, and it must have had its frequent earthquake-agues and shaking-fits.

There is, however, another witness besides the leaf-beds of the island of Mull, which we may properly call into court to give evidence regarding the Tertiary period in Scotland. It is known that from a very early time masses of amber have been occasionally furnished by the north-eastern shores

of the kingdom, in especial by that extensive tract of coast which stretches from the Buchan-ness to the Firth of Tay; and the geologist now recognises amber as a vegetable production of the Middle Tertiary ages. It is the resin of an extinct pine, which the fossil botanist has only of late learned to term the Pinus succinifer, or amber pine, but which the Prussian peasantry, who gather amber on the southern shores of the Baltic, used for ages to associate with this substance, from its occurrence in a fossil state in the same beds as amber wood. The ornamental character of this precious resin seems to have been appreciated by the native Scotch at an early period: beads of amber have been found in the old sepulchral barrows of the kingdom. Its value, however, as we learn from the first notice of it which occurs in our written history,-that of Hector Boece,-has not been always appreciated. After describing it, not very inadequately, as 'ane maner of goum or electuar, hewit like gold, and sa attractive of natur, that it drawis stra, flax, or hemmes of claethis to it in the samen maner as does an adamant stone grow,' he goes on to say that 'twa year afore the comin af [his] buke to licht (1524) thair arrivit an gret lompe of this goum in Buchquhane, als meikle as an hens; and wes brocht hame by the herdes quhilk wer kepand thair bestis, to thair housis, and cassin in the fere. And becaus they fand an smell and odour thairwith, they scha to thair maister that it wes garand for the insens that is maid in the kirkes. Thair maister wes ane rud man as thay wer; and tuk bot ane litell part thairof, and left the remanent part behind him as mater of litell effect. All the parts of this goum, quhen it wes broken, wes of hew of gold, and schone lyke the licht of an candell. The maist part of this goum or electuar 'wes destroyit be rud peple afore it cam to any wise mannis eirs; of quhome may be verifyet the proverb, "The sow cares not for balme." Als sone as I wes advertisit thairof, I maid sic diligence that ane pairt of it

was brocht me at Aberdene,' I may add to this notice of the old chronicler, that up to a comparatively recent period, ornaments of amber, especially amber beads of large size, or, as they were termed by our ancestors, 'lamour beads,' were highly valued by the humbler Scotch. That mysterious attractive property which resided in this gem-like resin, and which has since been found pregnant with that wonderful science to which the substance has given its Greek name, electrum, threw a halo of mystery around it, that served to enhance its native beauty. The Laird of Dumbiedykes was, it must be confessed, neither a very fervent nor very poetical lover; but a lover he was; and yet he could find nothing more apt with which to compare the eyes of his mistress, when turned upon him in her gratitude, than to beads of amber. 'Dinna ye think,' said the laird, 'puir Jeanie's e'en, wi' the tears in them, glanced like lamour beads, Mr. Saddletree?'

To the geologist this precious gum of the Tertiary ages is fraught with a peculiar interest, from the circumstance that it forms the best of all matrices for the preservation of organisms of the more fragile kinds. Mosses, fungi, and liverworts, are plants of so delicate a structure, that they are rarely or never preserved in shale or stone; but specimens of all three have been found locked up in amber in a state of the most perfect keeping. And, besides containing fragments of the pine which produced it, it has been found to contain minute pieces of four other species of pine, with bits of cypresses, yews, junipers, oaks, poplars, beeches, etc.,in all, forty-eight different species of shrubs and trees, which must have flourished in the forests where it grew, and which, 'viewed in the group, may be regarded as constituting,' says Professor Göppert, a flora of a North American character.' You will of course remark how directly this evidence bears on that of Professor Agassiz. The most remarkable organisms of the amber, are, however, its insects,-a kind of

fossils suggestive of a very different poetry from that which Pope elaborated from them in his well-known simile :

'Pretty in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms:
The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the mischief they got there!'

Fossil insects occur in both the Secondary and Paleozoic divisions, but rarely indeed in a state of sufficient entireness to enable the entomologist to distinguish their species. Even in classing them into families and genera, our best writers on the subject, such as the Rev. Mr. Brodie, confess that some of the number are very imperfectly made out. In the amber, on the contrary, even the most delicate ephemeræ that ever sported for a single summer evening in a forest glade, and then perished as the night came on, are preserved in a state of perfect entireness. In the amber of Prussia eight hundred different kinds of insects have been determined, most of them belonging to species, and even genera, that appear to be distinct from any now known; while of the others, some are nearly related to indigenous species, and some seem identical with existing forms that inhabit the warmer climates of the south. From their great specific variety and abundance we may infer that insects then, as now, formed the most numerous division of the animal kingdom. Our entomologists reckon at the present time about eleven thousand species of recent British insects,

a number many times greater than that of all its other denizens of the animal kingdom united. You will scarce deem the riddle regarding the entombment of these fragile creatures in the amber, which so puzzled the poet, particularly a hard one: the process must have resembled that which we see going on in our pine-forests every summer. The little flutterers must have settled on the bleeding trunks of the Pinus succinifer, and stuck fast, and the after flow of the sap covered them over. They add an interesting fea