Reflections on Primitive Vegetation. 9 



beings, with an organization, less extraordinary than that of 

 their predecessors, but differing from them almost as widely 

 as they did from those of our epoch. 



To what causes can we attribute the destruction of all the 

 plants which characterise this remarkable vegetation ? Is it 

 to a violent revolution of the globe ? Is it to a gradual change 

 in the physical circumstances necessary to their existence, — 

 a change which may, in part, be owing to the very presence 

 of these vegetables ? These are questions which we cannot 

 determine in the present state of our knowledge. 



Meanwhile we are certain, that the deposition of the latest 

 beds of the coal formation, was followed by the destruction 

 of all the species which constituted the primitive vegetation, 

 particularly of those singularly constructed and gigantic trees 

 the Lycopodia, Filices, and arborescent Equiseta, which were 

 the most prominent feature of this early creation* 



After the destruction of this luxuriant primitive vegetation, 

 the vegetable kingdom appears to have been a long time in 

 reaching an equal degree of developement. Scarcely ever, 

 indeed, in the numerous beds of the secondary formations, 

 which succeed the coal strata, do we find any of those masses 

 of vegetable impressions, a kind of natural herbaria, which, in 

 these ancient deposits of carbon, are evidences of the simul- 

 taneous existence of a prodigious number of plants. Scarcely 

 any where do we see in these strata, such immense beds of 

 fossil fuel ; and when found, they are never, in number and 

 extent, to be compared with those of the regular coal deposits. 

 In fact, during the formation of the secondary rocks, the ve- 

 getable kingdom must either have occupied but very narrow 

 limits on the earth's surface, or its scattered individuals must 

 have barely covered a barren soil, of which the revolutions of 

 the globe did not allow them to become the quiet possessors, 

 or, finally, the state of the surface of the earth at that period, 

 was not favorable to the preservation of its vegetable inhabi- 

 tants. 



However, the long interval of time which divides the coal 

 formations from the tertiary strata, a period which witnessed 

 so many physical revolutions of the globe, and the creation of 

 those gigantic reptiles in the midst of the ocean, types of an 

 organization so extraordinary, that we might often fancy our- 

 selves recognising the monsters to which the imagination 

 of the poets of antiquity gave birth ; — this period, I repeat, is 



* We still find, in some parts of the secondary strata, a small number of 

 arborescent Ferns and gigantic Calamites, but they are much less than 

 those of the coal strata ; and we discover no trace of the arborescent Lyco- 

 podiacea, analogous to the Lepidodendrons. 



