THE GLOSSOPTERIS FLORA; AN EXTINCT 

 FLORA OF A SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE 

 CONTINENT. 



THE last phase of the Carboniferous period in the 

 Northern hemisphere was marked by widespread 

 forests stretching over a considerable tract of country, 

 intersected by shallow lagoons or the remnants of a former 

 sea, on the floor of which were built up thick masses of 

 limestone in the earlier part of the Carboniferous Epoch. 

 A succession of sandstones, shales and coal seams, marks 

 the position of this ancient forest, and from the fossil plants 

 of the Coal Measures we learn that the vegetation was 

 characterised by a general uniformity in the plant types. 

 Gigantic Vascular Cryptogams, such as Calainites, Lepido- 

 dendra, Sigillariece, numerous ferns, and extinct forms 

 agreeing in the structures of their wood with present-day 

 coniferous and cycadean plants constituted the greater 

 part of this Palaeozoic flora. In the succeeding Permian 

 period the vegetation retained in many respects the 

 character of the Coal Period forests ; some genera had 

 become extinct, and others became more abundant or 

 appeared for the first time. From Arctic latitudes, through 

 Europe, North America and China the fossil remnants of 

 this Permo-Carboniferous vegetation have been found in 

 abundance, and from the Zambesi district of Africa typical 

 Coal Measure genera are recorded. 



Passing further south, we find in South America, Africa, 

 India and Australia, sedimentary deposits which it is 

 believed represent fragments of a Southern hemisphere 

 Continent. In these beds certain forms of plants are met 

 with in considerable abundance, and the botanical evidence 

 distinctly points to the existence of a widely distributed 

 flora differing in its most characteristic types from the 

 contemporaneous vegetation of the North. The Southern 

 plant beds are in part of Permo-Carboniferous and Triassic 

 aee. 



