HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



77 



reeds, rushes, lycopodiums, ferns, and a few forms 

 ■wliich, if not true conifers, may be received as their 

 herald. They are, however, met with but sparingly 

 in this formation. These facts warrant us in taking 

 this period as the dawn of acrogeuic life. The flora 

 as the whole, however, is but meagre, the remains, 

 as a rule, ill preserved, and therefore the nature and 

 affinities of <he plants little known. During the suc- 

 ceeding Carljoiiiferous epoch, vegetable life assumed 

 an unprecedented importance. Here the acrogenic 

 forms reached the period of their 

 maximum development. Plants typi- 

 fied in the preceding rocks arc more 

 completely evolved, and accompanied 

 by many new individuals. All this 

 progressive change was not the work 

 of a short time only, but had occupied 

 the lapse of cycles of ages to elabo- 

 rate it. Owing to some circumstances, 

 into which we must not stop to inquire, 

 the growth was most advanced, lux- 

 uriant, and abvmdant, the types con- 

 spicuous and well marked, and the 

 conditions of growth, decay, deposit, 

 and preservation increasingly intelli- 

 gible. Unless our opinions, in future, 

 be modified by additional facts ga- 

 thered in new fields of .inquiry, the 

 phytologist may say, without fear of 

 contradiction, that the world had 

 never before witnessed so grand and 

 abundant a flora. This was truly a 

 day of plants. Araucarian pines, 

 palms, tree ferns, cycads, zamias, 

 gigantic reeds, and, doubtless, an un- 

 dergrowth of horse-tails, herbaceous 

 ferns, clubmosses, lichens, fungi, 

 fruits, and a few indistinct forms, 

 imagined to be flowers. To the geo- 

 logical pedant these objects are better 

 known under the less popular names, 

 lepidodendrons, sigillarias, uloden- 

 drons, bothrodendrons, sternbergia, 

 knorria, favularia, stigmaria, halonia, 

 piuitps, calamites, hippurites, astero- 

 phyllites, antholiies, carpolites, trigo- 

 nocarpons, sphenopteris, pecoi^teris^ 

 neuropteris, cyclopteris, odontoptcris, 

 otopteris, &c. And as this was, par 

 excellence, a day of cryptogamic life, doubtless the 

 conditions were highly favourable to a luxuriant 

 gi'owth of the fungi and lichens ; but of their actual 

 existence we have no proof. By referring to the 

 list of plants given above, it will be seen that many 

 of their names arc of a provisional character only, 

 they doing duty in the absence of names more 

 accurately descriptive of tlie nature and affinities of 

 these old world organisms ; as lepidodendron (scale- 

 tree), sigillaria (seal-like), calamites (reed-like), &c. 



It is but common prudence lo let this remain so 

 until much more information has been gathered, 

 specimens microscopically examined, and scien- 

 tifically handled and applied by competent men. 

 This process alone can furnish reliable data. My 

 own individual knowledge of, and pleasurable 

 labours among these fossil plants, warrant me in 

 saying that several of them ought to stand at the 

 head of genera covering many species ; v?hile 

 others, hitherto received as distinct species, arc un- 



rig. 48. Lepidodendron (restored) ; h, c, portion of bark of ditto ; d, branch 

 with leaves ; e, leaf j /, catkins ; g, bracts of ditto, inclosing spores. 



doubtedly only one and the same form in a different 

 state of preservation, &c. Before quitting this part 

 of our subject, it may not be unprofitable to re- 

 member that the estimated number of fossil plants 

 of the Carboniferous period known to geologists is 

 about 600, of wliich a full third are believed to have 

 been ferns. These figures contrast strangely with 

 the relative number of the pha;nogamic and crypto- 

 gamic plants of Great Britain at the present day — a 

 flora consisting of 1,000 species of flowering plants. 



