A PIECE OF COAL. 



619 



forms, and in all essential points of structure a close relationship is 

 indicated between them. It is, however, in their relationshijD Avith 

 modern plants that they are principally interesting. In the moist 

 woods of New England, and farther south along the summits of the 

 Alleghany Mountains, there lingers a group of little plants, called 

 Lycopods, ground-pines or club-mosses, that must be regarded as the 

 nearest living relatives of Lepidodendron. The habit of growth is 

 very much the same; the mode of fruiting is almost identical; the 

 little spores are produced with the same extravagant copiousness, and, 

 being resinous, are highly inflammable. Both plant and spores but 

 particularly the latter will bear long-continued maceration in water 

 without undergoing complete decay; and so it is, in a great many re- 

 spects, that our little club-mosses rarely attaining the dignity of a 



Fig- 10. Restoration of a 

 Calamite. 



Fig. 11. Coal-Fern: Calli- 

 pteris sullivanti. 



Fig. 12. Coal-Fern : Aletho- 



PTEEIS MaSSILONIS. 



foot in height are very exact miniatures of the ancient Lepidoden- 

 drons (Fig. 8). You may then, if you please, call the Lepidoden- 

 drons and their allies gigantic club-mosses ; and yet, if you do no more 

 than that, you will fall a long way short of doing them full justice. 

 For though in the mode of fruiting they are indeed club-mosses, and 



