Remarks an the Ancient Flora of the Earth. 123 



these old periods had preserved itself unaltered even to the up- 

 permost strata of the old red sandstone or rothliegende. At least 

 we sometimes observe among the trunks of trees dug up at 

 Kyffhauser, and in the Forest of Thuringia, some whose inner 

 texture so very closely agrees with what are called star-stones, 

 found in beds of coal ( Palmacites viacroporus and microporus) 

 that we cannot help believing them to have belonged to a species 

 perfectly identical. Moreover, impressions of Lepidodendrtm 

 have frequently been found in the old red sandstone or rothlie- 

 gende of Rothenburg, (L. aculeatum, Sternberg.) Fragments 

 of calamite have also been found in the same formation ; and 

 we can hardly doubt, according to circumstances, that the softer 

 parts of plants in pit- coal would be found here also, had not 

 the predominating coarse grains, and the tumultuous formation 

 of the old red sandstone formation, prevented their preservation. 

 In exactly the same way, no traces of plants, except the imper- 

 fectly preserved remainsof the stemsol Lepidodendron, Calamites, 

 &c., are ever found in the coarse granular strata of coal sand- 

 stone ; neither are the leaves and the finer traces of Filices, Ly- 

 copodiacece, and others of the same kind, ever found in such 

 coarse conglomerated strata. 



It further seems to us, as if the characteristic forms of remote 

 periods were continued by the perfect accordance of the species, 

 even to much newer strata. We, for instance, owe to Schlotheim 

 the knowledge of a remarkable Syringodendron, (his Palma- 

 cites canalicuiatus, Petrifactenk, 396, tab. xvi. f. 2,) found in 

 the strata of the sandstone at Gotha, decidedly belonging to the 

 keuper formation. Count Sternberg has since recognised it as 

 identical with his Syringodendron sulcatum, found also in the 

 coal of Eschweiler, Essen and Waldenburg. But this observa- 

 tion appears to us particularly imjwrtant on this account, be- 

 cause we have lately been assured by the remarkable researches 

 of M. Brongniart, that one of the same species of plants, belong- 

 ing to a former age, is known to exist both in the sandstone of 

 the keuper formation, and in the strata belonging to the forma- 

 tion of the Lias and Oolite of the great Jurafoyrviation. But 

 these are rocks, which, in regard to their kind of formation, and 

 the character of their animal remains, are as perfectly different 



