92 THE HISTORY OF CREATION, 
an important share in the composition of the archilithie 
Algee flora. 
If we now again take into consideration the flora of the 
primordial period, which was exclusively formed by the 
group of Aloz, we can see that it is not improbable that 
its four subordinate classes had a share in the composition 
of those submarine forests of the primzeval oceans, similar 
to that which the four types of vegetation—trees with 
trunks, flowering shrubs, grass, and tender leaf-ferns and 
mosses—at present take in the composition of our recent 
land forests. 
We may suppose that the submarine tree forests of the 
primordial period were formed by the huge Brown Alge, 
or Fucoideee. The many-coloured flowers at the foot of 
these gigantic trees were represented by the gay Red 
Algze, or Floridez. The green grass between was formed 
by the hair-like bunches of Green Algze, or Chloroalgze. 
Finally, the tender foliage of ferns and mosses, which at 
present cover the ground of our forests, fill the crevices left by 
other plants, and even settle on the trunks of the trees, at 
that time probably had representatives in the moss and fern- 
like Siphoneze, in the Caulerpa and Bryopsis, from among 
the class of the primary Algze, Protophyta, or Archephycez. 
With regard to the relationships of the different classes of 
Algze to one another and to other plants, it is exceedingly 
probable that the Primary Algz, or Archephycez, as already 
remarked, form the common root of the pedigree, not merely 
for the different classes of Algz, but for the whole vege- 
table kingdom. On this account they may with justice be 
designated as primzeval plants, or Protophyta. 
Out of the naked vegetable Monera, in the beginning of the 
