62 BOTANY 



comparatively recent origin, for not one really undoubted 

 specimen of this now dominant family has been found 

 in rocks older than the base of Cretaceous times. One 

 or two very rare and doubtful fossils, which may be 

 Angiosperms, are known as far back as the Lias. We 

 have then to picture in all the earlier epochs a vegeta- 

 tion in which not only all the living species are absent, 

 but one in which the leading families now dominating 

 nearly every locality in the present earth were not at 

 all represented. There were not only no trees of the 

 nature of Oaks, Beeches, or Poplars, no Daisies, or Lilies, 

 or Roses, no Palms, but not even grass. In the times 

 preceding the earliest Cretaceous, when the advent of 

 these modern families changed the face of the vegeta- 

 tion, the most highly evolved family appears to have 

 been one which is now extinct, but was not unlike in 

 external appearance the rare family of Cycads still 

 living. In several ways these curious plants may be 

 taken as a parallel in the vegetable kingdom of the 

 strange Duck-billed Platypus in the animal world. 



While the extinct members of this cycad-like group 

 took the highest place in the scale of evolution of the then 

 existing plants, several members of the lower families 

 were abundant and bore a more familiar aspect. Pine- 

 trees, very similar to those now living, must have been 

 numerous then, as well as members more or less closely 

 allied to the present Monkey-puzzle (Araucaria). There 

 were also numerous ferns which differed externally but 

 little from many living genera, and there must have 

 been club-mosses, though we know but little about them 

 at that epoch. There were also large and small equi- 

 setums, very similar in habit to those now living. 



Going back to the earlier times, the plants get increas- 

 ingly unlike the modern types until we get back to the 



