1 90 EVIDENCE OF THE FOSSIL FLORA. 



of the vegetable remains of the system in the province telenet 

 it derives its name, by stating that he had submitted his 

 specimens to " Mr Robert Brown and Dr Greville, and 

 that neither of these eminent botanists were able to say 

 much more regarding them than that they were fucoid-like 

 bodies." 



Such are the vegetable organisms of the Old Red Sand- 

 stone and Silurian systems : they are the remains of the 

 ancient marine plants of ancient marine deposits, and, as such, 

 lend quite as little support to the development hypothesis as 

 the recent algae of our existing seas. The case, stated in its 

 most favourable form, amounts simply to this, — that at cer- 

 tain early periods, — ^represented by the Upper and Lower 

 Silurian and the Old Red deposits, — the seas produced sea- 

 plants j and that, at a certain later period, — that of the Car- 

 boniferous system, — the land produced land-plants. But 

 even this, did it stand alone, would be a too favourable state- 

 ment. I have on one occasion seen the fisherman bring up 

 with his nets, far in the open sea, a wild rose-bush, that, 

 though it still bore its characteristic thorns, was encrusted with 

 serpula, and laden with pendulous lobularia. It had been 

 swept from its original habitat by some river in flood, that 

 had undermined and torn down the bank on which it grew ; 

 and, after floating about, mayhap for months, had become so 

 saturated with water, that it could float no longer. And in 

 that single rose-bush, dragged up to the light and air from 

 its place among Sertularia, Flustra, Serpula, and the deep-sea 

 fucoids, I had as certain an evidence of the existence of the 

 aicotyledonous plant as if I had all the families of the Ro- 

 sacese before me. Now, we are furnished by the more an- 

 cient formations with evidence regarding the existence of a 

 terrestrial vegetation such as that which the rose-bush in this 

 case supplied. We cannot expect that the proofs should be 

 numerous. In the chart of the Pacific attached to the better 



