12 Reflections on Primitive Vegetation. 



versity of organisms. Thus, in a country of small extent, the 

 vegetable kingdom offers to our notice plants as different from 

 each other as they are at the present day. 



To the Coniferce, with leaves narrow, hard, and of a dark 

 green colour, are added birches, poplars, walnuts, and maples, 

 whose leaves are large and of a fine green ; under the shade 

 of these trees, on the banks of lakes, or on their surface, grew 

 herbaceous plants, analogous to those which still embellish the 

 open country by the diversity of their forms and colours, and 

 whose variety renders them calculated to satisfy the different 

 appetites of an infinite number of animals of all classes. 



The forests of the ancient world, like those of our epoch, 

 served, in fact, for the retreat of a great number of animals, 

 more or less analogous to those now existing on our globe. 

 Thus, elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, bears, lions, stags of all 

 forms, and even of all heights, have successively inhabited 

 them ; birds, reptiles, and even numerous insects, complete 

 this picture of nature, as it then presented itself, upon those 

 parts of the earth, whose surface was above the waters ; — na- 

 ture as beautiful and as diversified, as that which we now see 

 upon its surface. 



On the contrary, in the Jirst ages of the creation of organ- 

 ized beings, the terrestrial surface, divided, without doubt, 

 into an infinity of low islands, and of a very uniform tempe- 

 rature, was, it is true, covered with immense vegetables, but 

 these trees, differing little from each other in their aspect 

 or the colour of their foliage, and deprived of the brilliantly 

 coloured flowers and fruits which array so many of our large 

 trees, must have impressed upon vegetation a monotony which 

 was unbroken, even by those small herbaceous plants, which 

 by the beauty of their flowers form the ornament of our woods. 



To this may be added, that neither mammifer, bird, nor 

 any other animal, appeared to animate these thick forests, and 

 we may form to ourselves a tolerably just idea of this prime- 

 val state of nature, sombre, melancholy and silent, but at the 

 same time so imposing, by its grandeur, and the part which 

 it has acted in the history of the globe. 



Such is, gentlemen, a sketch of the great revolutions of ter- 

 restrial vegetation ; as far as the researches made upon this 

 subject, during thirty years, will allow us to trace it. Each 

 day adds, undoubtedly, some new point to its details ; but 

 recent discoveries, in confirming the results at which we had 

 long since arrived, seem to announce, that no part of this 

 picture will undergo great changes, even when, thanks to the 

 materials collecting from all parts for this end, we may un- 

 dertake to form this outline into a more perfect picture. 



