38 ANCIENT PLANTS 



Let us now consider very shortly the salient features 

 of the seven epochs we have named as the chief divisions 

 of time. The vegetation of the CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD 

 is better known to us than that of any other period except 

 that of the present day, so that it will form the best 

 starting-point for our consideration. 



At this period there were, as there are to-day, oceans 

 and continents, high lands, low lands, rivers and lakes, 

 in fact, all the physical features of the present-day world, 

 but they were all in different places from those of to-day. 

 If we confine our attention to Britain, we find that at 

 that period the far north, Scotland, Wales, and Charn- 

 wood were higher land, but the bulk of the southern 

 area was covered by flat swamps or shallow inlets, where 

 the land level gradually changed, slowly sinking in one 

 place and slowly rising in others, which later began 

 also to sink. Growing on this area wherever they could 

 get a foothold were many plants, all different from any 

 now living. Among them none bore flowers. A few 

 families bore seeds in a peculiar way, differing widely 

 from most seed-bearing plants of to-day. The most 

 prevalent type of tree was that of which a stump is re- 

 presented in the frontispiece, and of which there were 

 many different species. These plants, though in size 

 and some other ways similar to the great trees of to-day, 

 were fundamentally different from them, and belonged 

 to a very primitive family, of which but few and small 

 representatives now exist, namely the Lycopods. Many 

 other great trees were like hugely magnified " horse- 

 tails " or Equisetums; and there were also seed-bearing 

 Gymnosperms of a type now extinct. There were ferns 

 of many kinds, of which the principal ones belong to 

 quite extinct families, as well as several other plants 

 which have no parallel among living ones. Hence one 

 may judge that the vegetation was rich and various, and 

 that, as there were tall trees with seeds, the plants were 

 already very highly evolved. Indeed, except for the 

 highest group of all, the flowering plants, practically all 



