144: RELATIVE GEOLOGICAL ANTIQUITY OF TREES. 



vegetable bodies which can resist the long-continued action of 

 water are few, and these mostly afford only characters of large 

 sections of the Vegetable Kingdom, without furnishing generic, 

 far less specific distinctions." 



It is therefore probable, that the fossil plants which have 

 hitherto been found, only partially represent the floras of 

 these remote ages ; and there is no denying that ideas obtained 

 from fossil plants, must be necessarily superficial and very 

 speculative. But there is a sufficient amount of evidence 

 furnished by them to show satisfactorily that the first plants 

 did not originate frrm seed but from spores. They were un- 

 doubtedly Cryptogams. And the first land plants were cer- 

 tainly swamp plants. Mosses, fitted to live in water as to-day 

 Bog-mosses are accustomed, gigantic Calamites and Lepido- 

 dendra. For ever since land existed there have been plants 

 of tree-like proportions and bulk. It is not necessary that 

 there should be a rich and varied flora for this result to be 

 produced. Were there no other plants in existence now but 

 those belonging to the Natural Order Kosacea}, we should still 

 have herbs, shrubs, and trees covering the landscape. The 

 yellow cinquefoil (Potentilla Canadensis), and the wild straw- 

 berry (Fragaria Virginiana), are lowly herbaceous plants ; the 

 common blackberry (Rubus villosus), and the swamp rose 

 (Rosa lucida), are shrubs ; and the apple, pear, plurn, and 

 cherry are the fruits of trees, yet the whole of these are Ko- 

 saceous plants. Therefore, notwithstanding the great same- 

 ness of the plants which covered these ancient landscapes, 

 they were not without their trees. 



As the land became more elevated and free from water, 

 Cycadaceae, Coniferae, and a plant allied to the Pandanus 01 

 Screw Pine of the tropics, were added to these primeval for- 

 ests ; then Dicotyledonous trees with true leaves, such as the 

 Willow and Maple, and along with them we find the first evi- 

 dence of the creation of flowers, for Nature is always consistent 

 with herself, flowers being, as is now universally admitted, 

 nothing but the 6rdinary leaves of the stem, brought together 

 in consequence of a loss of vegetative power in the branch on 

 which they are borne, and metamorphosed with reference 



