Chap, v Paleobotany, 1 860-1 goo 139 



possible to classify the members of the fossil Coal-measure 

 Flora, and to indicate with, perhaps, more than probability 

 the positions they should hold in the general scheme of 

 the vegetable kingdom. Mention should be made also of 

 the American school, prominent among whom stood 

 Leslie Ward, Dawson, and Wieland, the latter of whom 

 had done important work upon the group of the Bennettitae. 

 The researches and investigations so far considered were 

 concerned almost entirely with the Devonian, Carboniferous, 

 and Permian horizons of Europe. The vegetation of the 

 globe, so far as the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous 

 exhibit it, seems to have been on the whole fairly uniform, 

 but in Upper Carboniferous and Permian times two floras 

 prevailed, that in the northern hemisphere exhibiting in 

 the main the old types, which became almost extinct in 

 the southern. The Lower Carboniferous Flora was replaced 

 by a flora, the chief constituents of which were a number 

 of fern-like plants, possibly Ferns, possibly Cycadofilices, 

 together with a few members of other groups, chiefly 

 Equisetaceous, which, however, only here and there 

 included representatives of the northern types. The first 

 trace of this flora was the discovery in 1828, by Brongniart, 

 of the frond known as Glossopteris, which was found to 

 occur in India and in Australia. Another form, the 

 Equisetaceous Schizoneura, was discovered at about the 

 same time. After the lapse of many years Rubidge found 

 plants of the same type in 1859 in South Africa. Bunbury 

 described several new species from Nagpur in 1861, and 

 Carruthers recorded the occurrence of Glossopteris from 

 Queensland in 1872. Several species of the same genus 

 were described in 1878 by Feistmantel, who had them 

 from New South Wales. Tracing still further the progress 

 of discovery we find Zeiller describing a Rhaetic flora from 

 Tonquin, in 1882, in which Glossopteris was associated 

 with some plants of the northern types, and a similar 



