472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



secret resources of Nature's laboratory, amid so many convulsions of 

 the globe, are now buried deep in the bowels of the earth, packed 

 into solid sandstone cases, and under huge shady covers, and stored 

 up in the smallest compass by the mighty pressure of ponderous rock- 

 presses, constituting the chief source of our domestic comfort, and of 

 nearly all our commercial greatness. A coal-bed is, in fact, a hortus 

 siccus of extinct cryptogamic vegetation, bringing before the imagina- 

 tion a vista of the ancient world, with which no arrangement of land- 

 scape or combination of scenery can now be compared ; and, gazing 

 upon its dusky contents, our minds are baffled in aiming to compre- 

 hend the bulk of original material, the seasons of successive growth, 

 and the immeasurable years or ages which passed while decay, and 

 maceration, and chemical changes, prepared the fallen vegetation for 

 fuel. If the specimens of plants, thus strangely preserved, teach us 

 one truth more than another, it is this, that size and development are 

 terms of no meaning when applied to a low or a high type of organi- 

 zation. The Cryptogamia of the Old World, the earliest planting in 

 the new-formed soil, are in bulk, as well as in elegance and beauty of 

 form, unrivalled by the finest specimens of the modern forest. The 

 little and the great, the recent and the extinct, were equally the ob- 

 jects of Nature's care, and were all modelled with a skill and finish 

 that left nothing to be added. 



And as in early geological epochs they occupied so conspicuous a 

 position, so now in the annals of physical geography they are entitled 

 to a prominent place. With the exception of the grasses Nature's 

 special favorites they are the most abundant of all plants, possessing 

 inconceivable myriads of individual representatives in every part of 

 the globe, from which unfavorable conditions exclude all other vegeta- 

 tion ; and thus they contribute, far more than we are apt from a super- 

 ficial observation to imagine, to the picturesque and romantic appear- 

 ances exhibited by scenery, and to the formation of that richly-woven 

 and beautifully-decorated robe of vegetation which conceals the ghast- 

 ly skeleton of the earth, and hides from our view the rugged outlines 

 and primitive features of Nature. They are the first objects that 

 clothe the naked rocks which rise above the surface of the ocean ; and 

 they are the last traces of vegetation which disappear under degrees 

 of heat and cold fatal to all life. Their structure is so singularly 

 varied and plastic, that they are adapted to every possible situation. 

 In every country they form an important element in the number of 

 plants, the proportion to flowering plants decreasing from and increas- 

 ing toward the poles. Taking them as a whole, and in regard to their 

 size, they occupy a larger area of the earth's surface than any other 

 kind of vegetation. There are immense forests of trees here and there 

 in different countries, realizing Cowper's wish for " a boundless con- 

 tiguity of shade ; " there are vast colonies of flowering plants ; but the 

 range of the most ubiquitous tree or flower is vastly inferior to that of 



