LAND LIFE BEGINS 45 



Trees and flowers from the east coast, which got 

 them from the warm islands beyond, now mingle 

 with the fern forests of New Zealand ; but in the coal 

 forest there were no flowers. There were merely 

 certain crude green seed-organs, that we might call 

 flowerets, on some of the ferns; and in a later chapter 

 we will trace the evolution of the flowers from these. 

 There was a monotonous sombre green everywhere. 

 No birds had yet appeared. No moths or butterflies, 

 no bees or wasps, would be seen. There was no grass. 

 Beetles, fat and stumpy spiders, and centipedes were 

 everywhere. Great flying insects, unlike any that 

 we know, measuring three feet across the wings, were 

 the only creatures of the air. Wings began to be im- 

 portant, for the amphibious creatures that were 

 evolved from the lung-fishes swarmed in the forests, 

 and grew fat on the rich insect world. 



We have innumerable fossil skeletons of these 

 amphibians of the coal forests. Our frogs and toads 

 were not yet born, but creatures of the newt and 

 salamander type ran to a prodigious size. In the 

 swamps was a giant salamander, about five feet long, 

 which seems to have been the monarch of creation in 

 those days. Almost in every case where a new family 

 appears its members quickly run to a great bulk of 

 body. Food is very abundant, and at first the com- 

 petition for it is not so keen. After a time over- 

 population begins to tell. The fat, sluggish types, 

 which had had no work to do but eat, are very much 



