THE CARBONIFEROUS FLORA. 



Ill 



There is something very striking in this succession of 

 a new plant world without any material advance. It is 

 like passing in the modern world from one district to 

 another, in which we see the same forms of life, only 

 represented by distinct though allied species. Thus, when 

 the voyager crosses the Atlantic from Europe to Amer- 

 ica, he meets with pines, 

 oaks, birches, poplars, 

 and beeches of the same 

 genera with those he 

 had left behind ; but 

 the species are distinct. 

 It is something like this 

 that meets us in our as- 

 cent into the Carbonif- 

 erous world of plants. 

 Yet we know that this 

 is a succession in time, 

 that all our old Erian 

 friends are dead and 

 buried long ago, and 

 that these are new forms 

 lately introduced (Fig. 

 32). 



Conveying ourselves, 

 then, in imagination for- 

 ward to the time when 

 our greatest accumula- 

 tions of coal were formed, 

 and fancying that we are introduced to the Ameri- 

 can or European continent of that period, we find our- 

 selves in a new and strange world. In the Devonian 

 age, and even in the succeeding Lower Carboniferous, 

 there was in the interior of America a wide inland sea, 

 with forest belts clinging to its sides or clothing its isl- 

 ands. But in the coal period this inland sea had given 



abed e f g 



FIG. 32. Foliage from the coal-for- 

 mation, a, Alethopteris lonchitica, 

 fern (Moose River). >, Sphenophyl- 

 I'um ISchlotheimii (Pictou). 0, Lepi- 

 dodendron binerve (Sydney), d, As- 

 terophyllites foliosa (?) (Sydney). 

 e, Cordaites (Joggins). f, JVeurop- 

 teris rarinervis, fern (Sydney). 

 g, Odontopteris suhcuneata, fern 

 (Sydney). 



