490 PALEONTOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



in any way to the formation of the coal. But this is not a sufficient reason for 

 asserting their non-existence at the Carboniferous epoch. Ghondrites Colletii, 

 Lesqx., collected from Lodi, Ind., and found in connection with a bed of lime- 

 stone overlying a thin coal at the base of the true Coal Measures, or just above 

 the mill-stone grit, like Caulerpites marginatus, Lesqx., from an analogous sta- 

 tion in Pennsylvania, are sufficient proof of the existence there of marine vege- 

 tables already of a high order. But marine Algce could not live in the low 

 swamps where the coal was in process of formation, no more than they could 

 live now on the surface of the peat bogs, even of those which extend along the 

 sea shores. These plants had then, as they have now, a domain of their own . 

 they have casually been brought to live upon a limestone formed under deep 

 water, as the roof of a coal bed, but no remains of them could enter into its com- 

 pound. 



Of Epiphyllce, small Fungi or Lichens, as parasites of stems and leaves, the 

 concretions of Mazon creek have also no trace. They have, however, in great 

 quantity that peculiar small organized body, Gyromices Ammonis. Gopp., which 

 some European naturalists still persist in considering as a Fungus*. In the 

 nodules the white, shining, bony substance of this small Serpulidce is better pre- 

 served still than in the shale, and the tissue of fragments of thick leaves, 

 wherein it burrowed, is often perforated like a sieve, by the removal of this 

 shell after the destruction of the epidermis. 



The reason generally given for the non-appearance of remains of small, cellu- 

 lar, vegetables, like Fungi or Lichens, upon the bark of branches and trunks of 

 the Coal Measures, is, that the maceration of the woody tissue and its softening 

 has necessarily detached these small bodies from their place of origin. But if 

 this was the real cause of their disappearance, small vegetables of this kind 

 should have been preserved in the nodules of Mazon creek, as well as the small 

 vegetable organs, scales, hairs, fruit dots, and even seeds of Lycopodiacece, which 

 are as much exposed to separation and destruction by the process of maceration. 

 We find, moreover, a large number of these small plants in the fossil remains of 

 the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations, upon fragments of wood, which have 

 been exposed, before their petrification, to maceration, just as much as the plants 

 of the Carboniferous period. As these parasitic Fungi and Lichens are at our 

 time of rare occurrence on ferns, as also on Lycopodiaceoe and Equisetacece, I 

 would rather admit that their appearance is cotemporaneous with that of the 

 exogenous plants, on which they especially thrive, and that species of this class, 

 and also of mosses and Hepaticce had scarcely any representatives in the vege- 

 table world before the end of the palaeozoic period. 



*Prof. W. P. Schimper places it in species of doubtful affinity in his Pal. Veg., p. 144 

 In his Permain Flora, Goppert has it still as a Fungus. 



