282 COSMOS. 



of which has made such brilliant advances in modern times.* 1 

 The coal measures contain not only fern-like cryptogamic 

 plants and phanerogamic monocotyledons (grasses, yucca-like 

 liliacese, and palms), but also gymnospermic dicotoledons (coni- 

 fers and cycadeac), amounting in all to nearly 400 species, as 

 characteristic of the coal formations. Of these we will only 

 enumerate arborescent calamites and lycopodiaceas, scaly lepi- 

 dodendra, sigillaria3, which attain a height of sixty feet, and are 

 sometimes found standing upright, being distinguished by a 

 double system of vascular bundles, cactus-like stigmariae, a 

 great number of ferns, in some cases the stems, and in others 

 the fronds alone being found, indicating by their abundance 

 the insular form of the dry land,f cycadea3,;j; especially palms, 

 although fewer in number, asterophyllites, having whorl-like 

 *eaves, and allied to the naiades, with araucaria-likeconiferge,!! 

 Avhich exhibit faint traces of annual rings. This difference 

 of character from our present vegetation, manifested in the 

 vegetative forms which were so luxuriously developed 011 the 

 drier and more elevated portions of the old red sandstone, 

 was maintained through all the subsequent epochs to the 

 most recent chalk formations ; amidst the peculiar character- 

 istics 'exhibited in the vegetable forms contained in the coal 

 measures, there is. however, a strikingly marked prevalence 



* By the important labours of Count Steinberg, Adolphe Brongniart, 

 Gb'ppert, and Lindley. 



t See Robert Brown's Botany of Congo, p. 42, and the Memoir of 

 the unfortunate D'Urville, JDe la distribution des Fougeres sur la sur- 

 face du Globe Terrestre. 



J Such are the cycadeze discovered by Count Sternberg in the old car- 

 boniferous formation at Radnitz in Bohemia, and described by Corda, 

 (two species of cycatides and zamites Cordai ; see Gb'ppert, Fossile Cyca- 

 deen in den Arbeiten der Schles. Gesellschaft, fur vaterl. Cultur im 

 J. 1843, s. 33, 37, 40, and 50). A cycadea (Pterophyllum gonorrhachis, 

 Gopp.) has also been found in the carboniferous formations in Upper 

 Silesia, at Kbnigshiitte. 



Lindley, Fossil Flora, No. xv. p. 163. 



|| Fossil ConifercR, in Buckland's Geology, pp. 483-490. Witham has 

 the great merit of having first recognised the existence of coniferse in 

 the early vegetation of the old carboniferous formation ; almost all the 

 trunks of trees found in this formation were previously regarded as 

 palms. The species of the genus Araucaria are, however, not pecu- 

 liar to the coal formations of the British islands ; they likewise occur in 

 Upper Silesia. 



