THE PAGE OF NATURE. 59 



extraordinary facts with relation to members and allies 

 of the inoss tribe. The club-mosses, in particular, at a 

 former period seem to have played a more important part, 

 or to have found conditions more suitable to their luxu- 

 riant development than is the case at the present day. 

 Some of them are stated to have formed lofty trees eighty 

 feet high, with a proportionate diameter of trunk. They 

 are the most ancient of all plants. The oldest land- 

 plant yet known is supposed to be a species of lycopodium 

 closely resembling the common species of our moors. In 

 the upper beds of the Upper Silurian rocks, they are the 

 only terrestrial plants yet found. In the lower Old Red 

 Sandstone they also abounded ; while they occupied a 

 considerable space in the Oolitic vegetation. But it is 

 in the Coal-measures that they seem to have attained 

 their utmost size and luxuriance, sigillaria, stigmaria, 

 lepidodendron, etc., being now considered by competent 

 botanists to be highly -developed lycopodia. Along 

 with ferns, they covered the whole earth from Melville 

 Island in the Arctic regions to the Ultima Thule of the 

 Southern Ocean, with rank majestic forests of a uniform 

 dull green hue. The numerous coal-seams and inflam- 

 mable shale found in almost every part of the world, form 

 but a small portion of their remains. " Between the 

 time of the ancient lycopodite found in the flagstone 

 of Orkney," says Hugh Miller, " and those of the exist- 

 ing club-moss that now scatters its light spores by mil- 

 lions over the dead and blackened remains of its remote 

 predecessor, many creations must have intervened, and 

 many a prodigy of the vegetable world appeared, espe- 

 cially in the earlier and middle periods, Sigillaria, 



