98 EARLIEST VESTIGES OF CONIFEILE. 



The oldest vestiges of the Vegetable Kingdom that have been 

 preserved occur in the lower strata of the Primary or Palseozoic 

 (Ancient Life) division of the Geological Record, called the Cambrian 

 system.* They consist only of a few markings on slate or sandstone 

 of marine Algae (Sea-weeds). In the next higher system, the Silurian, 

 the remains of sea-weeds occur more frequently, and also the earliest 

 traces of a higher vegetation represented by Lycopodiacese (club-mosses). 

 In the Devonian period which succeeded the Silurian, a cryptogamic 

 vegetation seems to have covered the land in luxuriant abundance, and 

 with it Conifers and Cycads make their first appearance. Fragments 

 of wood having the structure of living Conifers are found in every 

 state of preservation throughout the entire series of geological formations 

 from the middle Devonian upwards, and they begin to be common 

 everywhere as early as the higher members of the Coal Measures.! 

 These earliest remains of wood appear to belong to primitive Taxads of 

 which silicified specimens of entire stems have been found in the Old 

 Eed Sandstone of Canada and New Brunswick ; these are the oldest 

 known coniferous remains. 



In the Carboniferous system (Coal Measures) vegetation attained a 

 luxuriance equalling, if not surpassing that at present existing. Over five 

 hundred species of plants have been described, which may perhaps be 

 only a fragment of the entire flora of that period but which never- 

 theless " is marked by a singular monotony of character all over the 

 world from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, the same genera and 

 sometimes even the same species appearing to have ranged over the 

 whole surface of the globe. It consisted almost wholly of vascular 

 cryptogams and pre-eminently of Equisetacese, Lycopodiacea? and 

 Ferns." J The coniferous trees of the Coal Measures are doubtfully 

 referred to four genera, the wood of some of them approaching in 

 structure that of the Araucarias ; among the fruits, one is much like 

 that of the living Gingko. The supra-carboniferous flora is simpler 

 and less rich than that below ; it included a Conifer to which the 

 name of Walcliia piniformis has been given, and some others. In the 

 succeeding system, the Permian, there is a marked diminution of plant 

 remains ; it seems as if the Earth were already exhausted, as one 

 flora after another of the carboniferous vegetation disappears. Fossil 

 fruits of Gingko and of Voltzia, an extinct genus allied to Cunning- 

 hamia, are among the very few Conifers that have been detected 

 in this system. 



A different vegetation characterises the Secondary or Mesozok- (Inter- 

 mediate Life) Division. In the Triassic system, the oldest of the series 

 of strata comprising it, Conifers, Equisetums and Ferns, some of them 

 arborescent, were among the ingredients of the forest. Of the Conifers, 

 Yoltzia, of which traces have been discovered in the Permian system, 

 became abundant, and another characteristic Conifer was Albertia, whose 

 affinity to living genera has not been clearly made out ; but the most 

 distinctive feature of the earlier Mesozoic Ages was the great development 

 of a Cycadaceous vegetation; so typical are these plants that the Mesozoic 



* For the explanation of this and other terms of the like kind the reader is referred to 

 text-books of Geology. 



t Solms-Laubach, "Fossil Botany," Garnsey's Translation, p. 80. 

 J Sir A. Geikie, Text Book of Geology, p. 725. 



