The Fern Alliance 



our coal may have been formed. It is not peat, nor 

 liquid mud, nor leaf-mould, but a slush more or less 

 resembling them. 



Great thickets of reeds very like our common horse- 

 tails (Equisetum limosum), but also 60 to 80 feet high, 

 would flourish along the banks of the sluggish rivers or 

 fringe the great coal-measure lagoons. 



The rootlets of these extinct Calamariae can some- 

 times be traced in a distinct and definite layer closely 

 resembling Equisetum deposits in a lowland bog. 



Beside the pools of black water were marsilea-like, 

 fern-like, and other herbaceous plants. 



Gigantic, bony-plated, salamander-like animals from 

 6 to 8 feet long wallowed in those slimy waters, where 

 also were plenty of the fishes on which they fed. 



The atmosphere in these forests and marshes w^ould 

 be damp and still. 



There was no lack of animal life, for things like ear- 

 wigs Hved upon the branches, and upon the ground 

 were great millipedes, very like the huge forms which 

 are common in the Madagascar jungle, and which roll 

 up into a ball an inch or more in diameter when dis- 

 turbed. We should also mention gigantic insects, such 

 as the great maybugs, w^hich were probably devoured 

 by large dragon-flies, two feet across the wing, and 

 very likely brilliantly coloured. 



The really important part of those forests was the 

 black slush or slime of the forest pools and slow rivers, 

 for in them the bodies of the animals and of algae, as 

 well as other vegetable matter, turned to bituminous coal. 



There is a graphic description by Stokes and Watson ^ 

 of the conditions in those days of certain flat, swampy 

 levels between the higher ground and the sea. Here 

 were groves of large trees which grew in brackish water, 

 or in mud like that of a mangrove swamp. 



81 F 



