ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION.— MAMMALIA ABUNDANT.
THE chalk-beds are the highest which extend over a considerable space; but in hollows of these beds, comparatively limited in extent, there have been formed series of strata—clays, limestones, marls, alternating—to which the name of the _Tertiary Formation_ has been applied. London and Paris alike rest on basins of this formation, and another such basin extends from near Winchester, under Southampton, and re-appears in the Isle of Wight. There is a patch, or fragment of the formation in one of the Hebrides. A stripe of it extends along the east coast of North America, from Massachusetts to Florida. It is also found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blended with formations still in progress. Though comparatively a local formation, it is not of the less importance as a record of the condition of the earth during a certain period. As in other formations, it is marked, in the most distant localities, by identity of organic remains.
The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be considered as the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the cretaceous period. We have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting up of its mouth, or a change of level in that quarter, may be supposed to have become an inland sheet of water, and that, by another change, of the reverse kind, it may be supposed to have become an estuary again. Such changes the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener than once, for, first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and limestone beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a second fresh water formation, in which the material of the celebrated _plaster of Paris_ (gypsum) is included; then, a second marine formation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a third series of fresh-water strata. Such alternations occur in other examples of the tertiary formation likewise.
The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of animals, and as we ascend in the series, we find more and more of these identical with species still existing upon earth, as if we had now reached the dawn of the present state of the zoology of our planet. By the study of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the whole term into four sub-periods, to which he has given names with reference to the proportions which they respectively present of surviving species—first, the eocene, (from ’ηως, the dawn; χαινος, recent;) second, the miocene, (μειων, less;) third, older pliocene, (πλειων, more;) fourth, newer pliocene.