620 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 





nothing else, yet, as regards other essential structural characters, they 

 deserve a much higher rank. Taking a section of the stem of Sigil- 

 laria, for examj^le, and studying the arrangement of the tissues the 

 pith, wood, bark, and vascular bundles we find a plan of structure 

 that characterizes only the very highest of modern plants (Fig. 9). 

 Api^ly the microscope to thin slices, and the most intimate connection 

 with the pines is suggested; indeed, if there were only time, it might 

 be shown that the range of relationship of these old plants extends 

 over a wide section of the vegetable kingdom, and is of such a nature 

 as to set them very much above their dwarfed repi'esentatives of the 

 present woods, the club-mosses. In addition to Lepidodendrons and 

 Sigillarias, the forests of the coal age supported many a tall pine, 

 particularly on the uplands, while groves of reed-like calamites (Fig. 

 10) fringed the swamps; and the whole surface, both of swamp and 

 upland grove, was covered with a dense undergrowth of magnificent 

 ferns (Figs. 11, 12, 13). But the pines were not the pines of our 

 woods, for some of them, through their broad, frond-like leaves and 

 other characters, were allied to ferns, while all of them showed more 



or less decided taints of characters inherited from 

 club-mosses, or rather the characters were inher- 

 ited with club-mosses from a common ancestor. 

 The calamites, too, were a curiously mixed-up 

 group, and even the ferns showed a most repre- 

 hensible lack of allegiance to the fern type, since 

 most of them united characters that do not be- 

 long to ferns at all, but are found now only sep- 

 arated in the palms on the one hand, and the 

 highest flowering plants on the other. It is ex- 

 tremely difiicult to present in few words any 

 clear picture of the old Carboniferous forests. 

 The stately club-mosses towering above all com- 

 petitors real monarchs of the wood ornament- 

 ed from root to crown with beautiful carvings 

 in regular and delicate designs ; the magnificent 

 ferns whose exquisite outlines are still preserved in the roof shales of 

 every coal-seam ; the dense, dark jungles, tangled and impenetrable ; 

 the heavy, steaming, miasmatic atmosphere ; the astonishing luxuri- 

 ance of all the vegetation these all are themes that claim the attention 

 of every v>^riter or speaker on this subject. But to my mind the prime 

 interest centers in the composite nature of the vegetation, with all its 

 wonderfully puzzling and intricate relationships. He must be dull, in- 

 deed, who can not see that in this significant mingling and blending 

 of characters, the old coal forests epitomize and foreshadow all subse- 

 quent vegetation. All the structural elements were there ; almost 

 every fundamental type had a place in some of the curiously con- 

 structed plans of plant-life, and all progress in higher vegetable 





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Fm. 13. Coal-Febn : Hy 



SIENOPHTLLITIS ALATUS. 



