MONKEY-PUZZLES 



according to our own beliefs, and as they probably existed 

 in the Lanarkshire coalfield and other places in Britain. 



In that gloomy mirk of the Carboniferous epoch, an 

 observer (if there had been any) would have dimly perceived 

 huge trunks rising to sixty or eighty feet and divided at the 

 top into a very few branches. All branches were covered over 

 by comparatively quite small leaves. Not a bad idea of the 

 Sigillarias, Lepidodendrons, etc., which made the forest can 

 be obtained by carefully looking at a pan of Selaginella 

 such as one finds in almost every botanical garden, and 

 imagining this to be eighty feet high. Through the bottomless 

 oozy slime which formed the ground, horizontal runners and 

 roots penetrated in every direction. Great fern-like plants 

 might be observed here and there. Sluggish rivers mean- 

 dered slowly through these forests, carrying silt and refuse 

 (their deposits are our Cannel coals). In the water and in 

 pools, or perhaps in the mud, were curious waterferns with 

 coiled-up crozier-like leaves. Perhaps horsetail-like plants 

 of huge size might have formed great reed-beds to which 

 those of to-day are as a plantation of one-year-old firs is to 

 a pine forest that has lasted for a century. 



Fishes and crustaceans, or lobster-like creatures, crawled 

 and squattered through the slime, pursued by salamander- 

 like animals with weak limbs and a long tail. Some of 

 these latter were seven to eight feet long. Millipedes, 

 scorpions, beetles and maybugs existed, and huge dragonflies 

 preyed on them. 



But there is one very ancient group of trees, the Arau- 

 carias or Monkey-puzzles, which are by no means uncommon 

 even now. The ordinary one (Araucaria imbricata) is often 

 planted in the British Isles, and it has, if you look closely 

 at it, a most peculiar appearance. It is like the sort of tree 



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