I877.J t:UJ [Lesquereux. 



of ferns, directed researches toward this new field of exploration and 

 opened a path which, by and by, enhxrged by new discoveries, may afford 

 a more reliable way for the determination of sijecies of this family. Sill 

 more recentlj'. Golden berg attempted a detailed monography of the 

 fossil p]iinis of Saarhvuck (^Flora Sar/^pontana), where he had found an 

 abundance of valuable materials. Of it he published only three fascicules; 

 but they represent a valuable monography of the ISijillarm, and this also 

 is a gain to the fossil flora. 



What conclusions may be derived from this? Shall we say that the coal 

 flora cannot be studied with advantage from a number of specimens ob- 

 served at peculiar localities? Shall we admit that this flora cannot be 

 studied at all, and that it should be left in its grand and sublime mystery? 

 The first assertion is right ; the second rests upon an objection, which may 

 be made against every study, which tends to the interpretation of docu- 

 ments whose writing is as yet imperfectly known. The hieroglyphs of 

 the Pyramids are still more obscure, still farther from exposing a compre- 

 hensive record of the history of the people who built them. Some have 

 been deciphered, nevertheless, and a few pages of the writing have thrown a 

 deal of light upon that history and have been accepted by science as a mo- 

 mentous revelation. The history of our earth is not a less important 

 knowledge than that of the races of men who have inhabited it. And how 

 can it be studied in all its bearings, if we do not take into consideration 

 the physical laws which have governed its atmosphere from the begin- 

 ning? The plants are the true recorders of atmospheric circumstances, 

 and the fossil plants the documents, the hieroglyphs written and left in 

 the strata of the earth for the interpretation of their laws. They have re- 

 corded them as clearly as it is done by the instruments used now, the 

 thermometers, the barometers, the hygrometers, etc. Shall we not open 

 the great book and try to read at least some of its pages, though they may 

 have become obscured by the walk of time? And as all animal life de- 

 pends on plants, the concordance of the development of both the vegetable 

 and animal worlds, should not be forgotten when we come to consider the 

 advantages which may be derived from the study of the coal flora of 

 America. For, of course, these advantages cannot be derivable in such 

 plenitude from an acquaintance with the vegetation of a single countrj''. 

 What has been discovered in Europe, from paleontological evidence, has 

 to be either confirmed, or perhaps, presented under a new light, by what 

 may be found on this continent. 



Tl)e results of the researches on the remains of coal plants in this country, 

 as far as they have now reached, may be already accounted creditable and 

 valuable. They have proved the exis ence of land vegetation, as far down 

 as the Upper Silurian period. They have settled the question of the exist- 

 ence of a marine vegetation in the true coal measures, where fucoidal re- 

 mains, some of them referable to old types, have been discovered in Pennsyl- 

 vania and Indiana. Tliey have also posi i vel }• established the fact oft he exist- 

 ence of Fungi or Mushrooms at the epoch of the coal. But by far the more in- 



