FEBRUARY. 6\) 



with the countless thousands of the animal kingdom, which, before and 

 since his creation, have occupied the earth's surface, have been, and are, 

 still dependent on this subtile agency for their very existence. 



I purpose noticing shortly its effects on plants. When first the 

 Almighty fiat went forth — " Let there be light," the earth, a mere 

 chaos before, began gradually to assume the garb of beauty ; a tiny 

 vegetation crept o'er those roclis of granite, which emerging from that 

 primeval ocean, gave first evidence of a condition necessary to support 

 vegetable life. How long the reign of Mosses, Lichens, &c. — of those 

 races whose highest organisation was a simple cell — lasted, is beyond 

 the sphere of investigation ; under the influence of light they performed 

 their allotted part, and as race after race died away, and left their 

 remains on the rock on which they grew, a thin coating of vegetable 

 matter would be formed, which, mixing with the disintegrated portions 

 of the rock beneath, in the course of time produced a depth of soil 

 capable of supporting a larger race of plants. The war of organic life 

 on inorganic matter had, in fact commenced ; and from that far distant 

 time to the present, through all the various phases of the earth's exist- 

 ence, Ii^//t has been the motive power — the invisible mainspring — 

 which set in action the first principles of organic matter, and, as an in- 

 strument in the Creator's hands, has brought to perfection, and con- 

 tinued to the present time, the various races of the animal and vegetable 

 kingdoms which have spread themselves over the earth. 



We have no evidence by the examination of the fossil remains of the 

 earliest vegetation, that a progressive advancement from a lower to a 

 higher class of plants took place in any regular order — the inference is 

 rather to the contrary ; and, in all probability, successive races of 

 plants (as with animals), were bought into existence as the conditions 

 necessary to insure them full development became ready for their 

 reception. Each change of sea bottom to dry land would find the 

 latter perhaps better able to support vegetation as marine life became 

 more abundant ; and as larger races of plants came into existence 

 they would assist more materially, by their roots penetrating the rocky 

 subsoil, its decomposition. Whatever may have been the kind of 

 plants which replaced the earliest form.s of vegetable life, the knowledge 

 of the Flora of the coal formation is sufficient to show us, that at that 

 period a luxuriant vegetation was spread over vast areas of the earth's 

 surface, embracing a great variety of species — some of them differing 

 widely, while others are nearly identical with the races now living. 

 This state of things must have continued for a period beyond the power 

 of calculation, judging from the number of submerged forests which now 

 form our coal-fields, and which show a succession of vegetation on the 

 same spot which must have occurred at intervals of time of great extent 

 between. It has been argued that, at the period in question, the con- 

 ditions for promoting a luxuriant vegetation were in greater abundance 

 — that the atmosphere was charged with a far greater per centage of 

 carbonic acid — and that the splendour of the vegetation of that day, 

 when Mosses assumed the port of lofty trees, must have been owing to 

 this circumstance. There is no reason whatever for assuming such to 



