

EVIDENCE OF THE FOSSIL FLORA. 193 



the infidel, as a squalid, ill-formed savage, with a rugged 

 shaggy nature, which it would require the suggestive neces- 

 sities of many ages painfully to lick into civilization 1 Or 

 does it appear rather like the Adam of the poet and the theo- 

 logian, independent, in its instantaneously-derived perfection, 

 of all after development ? 



" Adam, the goodliest mau of men since bom 

 His sons." 



Is this tissue vascular or cellular, or, like that of some of the 

 cryptogamia, intermediate ? Or what, in fine, is the nature 

 and bearing of its mute but emphatic testimony on that doc- 

 trine of progressive development of late so strangely resus- 

 citated 1 



In the first place, then, this ancient fossil is a true wood, 

 — a Dicotyledonous or Polycotyledonous G^mnosperm, that, 

 like the pines and larches of our existing forests, bore naked 

 seeds, which, in their state of germination, developed either 

 double lobes to shelter the embryo within, or shot out a fringe 

 of verticillate spikes, which performed the same protective 

 functions, and that, as it increased in bulk year after year, 

 received its accessions of growth in outside layers. In the 

 transverse section the cells bear the reticulated appearance 

 which distinguish the coniferse (fig. 65, a) ; the lignite had 

 been exposed in its bed to a considerable degree of pressure j 

 and so the openings somewhat resemble the meshes of a net 

 that has been drawn a little awry ; but no general oblitera- 

 tion of their original character has taken place, save in minute 

 patches, where they have been injured by compression or the 

 bituminizing process. All the tubes indicated by the open- 

 ings are, as in recent coniferse, of nearly the same size ; and 

 though, as in many of the more ancient lignites, there are no 

 indications of annual rings, the direction of the medullaiy 

 rays is distinctly traceable. The longitudinal sections are 



S 



