The Lower Eocene Birds.
The lower Eocene birds, like the placental mammals identified by Professors Owen[1] and Milne Edwards,[2] belong to extinct genera. In Britain the rivers were haunted by large goose-like birds (Odontopteryx) with the beak armed with curious tooth-like processes, by herons, and by kingfishers (Halcyornis). There were flights of gulls on the sea, and on the land were to be seen vultures (Lithornis) and a great bird (Dasornis) resembling in the size of its head the moa of New Zealand. In France the Gastornis, of the size of an ostrich,[3] "but more robust and with affinities to wading and aquatic birds," inhabited the banks of the rivers.
The Mid Eocene Flora.
The mid Eocene land in Britain was covered with a rich and luxuriant vegetation[4] like that of the tropics, in which evergreen forest trees abound. The leaf beds of Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight, and of Bournemouth in Hampshire, enable us to form a definite idea of the forests (Fig. 4) which extended from the margin of the Nummulitic sea far away inland, clothing hill and valley with a dense mantle of green. Here cypresses, yews, and pines raised aloft their dark-green foliage; there the screw-pine (Pandanus), fan-palms, and feather--
- ↑ Owen, Trans. Zool. Soc., vii. p. 146. Palæontology, p. 291. Quart. Geol. Journ. Lond., xxix. p. 511.
- ↑ Milne Edwards, Recherches sur les Oiseaux Fossiles, 4to.
- ↑ Owen, Palæontology, p. 291.
- ↑ J. S. Gardner.—"Tropical Forests of Hampshire," Nature, xv. pp. 229, 258, 279. Alum Bay: De La Harpe. Geology of Isle of Wight. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, pp. 41, 109.
