364 



THE MICROSCOPE. 



in their season, scarce support the existence of a single 

 creature, and remain untouched, in stem and leaf, from 

 their first appearance in spring, until they droop and 

 wither under the frosts of early winter. 



" It is not until we enter into the earlier Tertiaries that 

 we succeed in detecting a true dicotyledonous tree ; on such 

 an amount of observation is this order determined, that 

 when Dr. John Wilson, the Parsee Missionary, submitted 

 to me specimens of fossil woods which he had picked up 

 in the Egyptian Desert, in order that, if possible, I might 

 determine their age, I told him that if they exhibited the 

 coniferous structure, they might belong to any geologic 

 period from the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone 

 downwards; but if they manifested in their tissue the 

 dicotyledonous character, they could not be older than the 

 times of the Tertiary. On submitting them in thin slices 

 to the microscope, they were found to exhibit the peculiar 

 dicotyledonous structure as strongly as the oak or chest- 

 nut. And Lieutenant Newbold's researches in the deposit 

 in which they occur has since demonstrated, on strati- 

 graphical evidence, that it belongs to the comparatively 

 modern formations of the Tertiary. 



" The flora of the coal measures was the richest and most 

 luxuriant, in at least individual productions, with which 

 the fossil botanist has formed any acquaintance. Never 

 before or since did our planet bear so rank a vegetation as 

 that of which the numerous coal seams and inflammable 

 shales of the carboniferous period form but a portion of 

 the remains, the portion spared, in the first instance, by 

 dissipation and decay, and in the second by the denuding 

 agencies. Almost all our coal, the stored-up fuel of a 

 world, forms but a comparatively small part of the pro- 

 duce of this wonderful flora. Yet, with all this singularly 

 profuse vegetation of the coal measures, it was a flora un- 

 fitted, apparently, for the support of either graminivorous 

 bird or herbivorous quadruped. Nor floes the flora of the 

 Oolite seem to have been in the least suited for the pur- 

 poses of the shepherd or herdsman. Not until we enter 

 on the Tertiary periods do we find floras amid which man 

 might have profitably laboured : nay, there are whole orders 

 and families of plants, of the very first importance to man, 



