84 



PALiEOPHYTOLOGY. 



marked, present us with nothing but cellular- 

 leaved marine plants. It is in the Devonian 

 strata that a few cryptogamic forms of vascular 

 vegetables, calamites and lycopodiaceae, are 

 first encountered('»^). Nothing seems to tes- 

 tify, as, on theoretical views On the ^implicit]/ 

 of the first forms of organic life, it has been as- 

 sumed, that vegetable life was awakened sooner 

 than animal life, upon the face of the old earth, 

 and that this was brought about or determined 

 by that. The existence of races of men in the 

 very northern polar zones, who subsist on the 

 flesh of fish, and seals and whales, is enough 

 of itself to assure us of the possibility of living 

 without vegetable matter of any kind. After 

 the Devonian strata and the mountain lime- 

 stone, comes a formation, the botanical anato- 

 my of which has made such briUiant progress 

 in recent times("^). The Coal Formation com- 

 prises not only fern-like cryptogamic plants, 

 and phanerogamous monocotyledons — grasses, 

 yucca-like liliaceous vegetables and palms ; it 

 further contains gynospermic dicotyledons — 

 coniferae and cycadeas. Nearly 400 species 

 from the flora of the coal formation are al- 

 ready known. I here mention only arborescent 

 calamites and lycopodiaceae ; scaly lepidoden- 

 drons ; sigillariae of 60 feet long, and occasion- 

 ally found standing erect and rooted, and dis- 

 tinguished by a double vascular fasciculate 

 system ; cactus-like stigmariae ; a host of ferns 

 now arborescent, and again mere fronds, and by 

 their quantity proclaiming the still entirely insu- 

 lar character of the dry land^^^^) ; cycadeaeC*'") ; 

 and particularly palms(2") in small numbers, 

 asterophyllites with verticillate leaves, allied to 

 the Najades ; araucaria-like coniferae(2") with 

 slight indications of annual rings. The diver- 

 sity in character of a vegetation which flour- 

 ished luxuriantly on the uplifted and dry-laid 

 portions of the old red sandstone, from the 

 vegetable world of the present time, still contin- 

 ues through the later phytological periods on 

 to the last layers of the chalk(=^'-'2) ; but with a 

 great degree of strangeness in the forms, the 

 flora of the coal formation still exhibits a very 

 remarkable uniformity in the distribution of the 

 same genera (if not always of the same" spe- 

 cies), over every part of the then surface of the 

 earth; in New Holland, Canada, Greenland, 

 and Melville Island, the genera are still the 

 same. 



The vegetation of the former world presents 

 us with forms the affinities of which with vari- 

 ous families of the present age remind us that 

 with them many intermediate members in the 

 series of organic developments have perished. 

 To quote two instances only : the Lepidoden- 

 dra, according to Lindley, stand between the 

 Coniferae and the Lycopoditeffi("*) ; the Arau- 

 carita and Pinita, on the other hand, in the 

 combination of their vascular fascicles, exhibit 

 something that is foreign and peculiar. But 

 confining our views to the present order of 

 things, the discovery of Cycadeas and Coniferae 

 in the flora of the old coal measures in juxta- 

 position with Sagenaria and Lepidodendra, is 

 still of great significance. The Coniferae, to 

 wit, have not only relationships with the Cupu- 

 liferae and the Betulineae, by the side of which 

 we encounter them in the brown-coal forma- 

 tion, but they are further connected with the 



Lycopoditeae. The family of the sago-like Cy- 

 cadeas approaches the Palms in external appear- 

 ance, whilst agreeing essentially with the Co- 

 niferae in the structure of the flowers and 

 fruit^^'^). Where several series of coal strata 

 lie over one another, the genera and species 

 are not always mixed ; they are rather and for 

 the major part generically arranged, so that 

 only Lycopodites and certain Ferns occur in 

 one series of beds, and Stigmariae and Sigilla- 

 riae in'gaother. 



In order to form an idea of the luxuriance of 

 vegetation in the former world, and of the 

 masses of vegetable matter accumulated by 

 running water, and which have very certainly 

 been converted into coal in the humid way(^^*), 

 I remind the reader that in the Saarbriick coal 

 field there are 120 seams of coal lying one over 

 another, exclusive of a host of smaller seams 

 less than a foot in thickness ; that there are 

 single seams of coal of 30 and even of more 

 than 50 feet thick, as at Johnstone in Scotland, 

 and Creuzot in Burgundy ; whilst in the forest 

 regions of our temperate zone, the carbon which 

 the trees of a certain superficial extent of 

 ground contain, would not cover this surface 

 with a layer of much more than half an inch in 

 thickness (7 lines) in the course of one hundred 

 years(^^^). Near the mouth of the Mississippi, 

 and in the wood hillocks, as they have been call- 

 ed, of the Siberian Icy Sea, described by Ad- 

 miral Wrangel, however, there is at the present 

 time such an accumulation of trunks of trees, 

 such a quantity of drift wood, washed down by 

 land streams, and brought together by ocean 

 currents, that the phenomena remind us at 

 once of the events which took place in the in- 

 land waters and insulated bays of the primeval 

 world, and gave occasion to the production of 

 the coal formations which we now discover 

 hundreds of feet below the surface of the 

 ground. It is also well to remember that these 

 coal measures are indebted for no inconsidera- 

 ble portion of their materials not to the trunks 

 of mighty trees, but to small grasses, and to 

 frondiferous and low cryptogamic vegetables. 



The association of palms and cone-bearing 

 trees which we have just signalized in the coal 

 fields, continues through almost all the forma- 

 tions onwards to far into the tertiary period. 

 In the present world they seem rather to fly 

 each other's vicinity. We have, in fact, al- 

 though improperly, habituated ourselves so 

 much to regard the cone-bearers as northern 

 forms, that I myself, ascending from the shores 

 of the South Sea towards Chilpansingo and the 

 elevated valleys of Mexico, was somewhat 

 amazed when I found myself between Venta 

 de la Moxonera and the Alto de los Caxones, 

 3,800 feet above the level of the sea, riding for 

 a whole day through a dense forest of the Pinus 

 occidentalis, in which this cone-bearing tree, 

 so like our Lord Weymouth's or white pine, 

 was associated with a fan-leaved palm — the 

 Corypha dulcis, covered with flights of gay 

 coloured parrots(^'^). Southern America pro- 

 duces oaks, but not a single species of pine ; 

 and the first time that I again encountered the 

 familiar form of a fir-tree, it met me in the es- 

 tranging presence of a palm with its fan-like 

 leaves. In the north-east end of the Island of 

 Cuba, too, and so within the tropics, but scarcely 



