THE GENESIS AND MIGRATIONS OF PLANTS 2O/ 



claim not a few of them as the originals of present species. 

 Remains of the same plants have been found fossil in our 

 temperate region, as well as in Europe." 



Between 1860 and 1870 the writer was engaged in working 

 out all that could be learned of the Devonian plants of 

 Eastern America, the oldest known flora of any richness, and 

 which consists almost exclusively of gigantic, and to us 

 grotesque, representatives of the Club mosses, Ferns, and 

 Mares'-tails, with some trees allied to the Cycads and Pines. 

 In this pursuit nearly all the more important localities were 

 visited, and access was had to the large collections of Professor 

 Hall and Professor Newberry in New York and Ohio, as well 

 as to those of the Geological Survey of Canada, and to those 

 made in the remarkable plant-bearing beds of St. John, New 

 Brunswick, by Messrs. Matthew and Hartt. In the progress 

 of these researches, which developed an unexpectedly rich 

 assemblage of species, the northern origin of this old flora 

 seemed to be established by its earlier culmination in the 

 north-east, in connection with the growth of the American 

 land to the southward, which took place after the great Upper 

 Silurian subsidence, by elevations which began in the north, 

 while those portions of the continent to the south-west still 

 remained under the sea. 



When, in 1870, the labours of those ten years were brought 

 before the Royal Society of London, in the Bakerian Lecture 

 of that year, and in a memoir illustrating no less than one 

 hundred and twenty-five species of plants older than the great 

 Carboniferous system, these deductions were stated in con- 

 nection with the conclusions of Hall, Logan, and Dana, as to 

 the distributions of sediment along the north-east side of the 

 American continent, and the anticipation was hazarded that 

 the oldest Palaeozoic floras would be discovered to the north 

 of Newfoundland. Mention was also made of the apparent 

 earlier and more copious birth of the Devonian flora in 



s, E. 15 



