324 Ancient Vegetation of the Earth. 
The archipelagos, situated between the tropicks, such as the 
islands of the great Pacifick ocean, or the Antilles, are, then, the 
points of the globe which at the present time present vegetation 
the most analogous to that which existed upon the earth when 
the vegetable kindom commenced, for the first time, to develop 
itself thereon. 
_ Detailed examination of the vegetables which accompany the 
coal cannot fail, therefore, to induce the inference that at this re- 
mote epoch the surface of the earth, in the countries where are 
found those vast depots of fossil earbon with which we are most 
familiar, namely, in Europe and North America, offered the same 
climacterick. conditions which now exist in the archipelagos of 
the equinoctial regions; and probably a geographical configura- 
tion little different. 
When we consider the number and thickness of the layers 
which constitute most of the coal formations, and examine the 
changes that, from first to last, have taken place in the specifick 
forms of those vegetables of which they have been constituted, 
we cannot fail to see that this stupendous primitive vegetation, 
during a long interval, must have covered with its dense forests 
all parts of the globe which were at that period elevated above 
the sea; for all these present themselves with the same charac- 
teristicks in Europe and America; and equinoctial Asia, as well 
as New Holland, seem therefore to have participated, in this gen- 
eral uniformity of the structure of vegetables. 
Nevertheless, this primitive vegetable existence promptly dis- 
appeared, to give place to a new creation, composed of beings of 
an organization less extraordinary than the preceding, but almost 
equally different from such as flourish at the present day. 
To what cause can we attribute the destruction of all the plants 
which characterize this remarkable vegetation ? 
Is it due to some violent revolution of the globe? Did it arise 
from a gradual change of the physical conditions necessary t? 
their existence ; a change in part arising from the presence of 
these vegetables themselves? These questions caunot be re 
solved in the present state of our knowledge upon the subject. 
Certain it is, however, that the deposition of the last layers of 
the coal formation was followed by the destruction of all the 
species which constituted this primitive vegetation, and particur 
larly of those gigantick trees of peculiar structure, as the Lycop? 
