NORTH AMERICAN 



PALEOZOIC FOSSILS. 



BY the little words plants and animals we include all the organisms in the 

 world. But science, demanding technical words and controlling characteristics, has 

 added the word " Kingdom" to these common names; and hence all organisms and 

 all which have existed in the past are divided between the ' ' Vegetable Kingdom " 

 and the "Animal Kingdom." 



VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 



THE Palaeozoic Fossil plants are divided into seven classes ; viz. , Fucoides, Fungi, 

 Equisetacese, Filicacese, Lycopodiacese, Cordaitese, and Coniferae. The Fucoides are also 

 called Sargassites and Thalassophites. They are supposed to have some affinity with 

 the leathery marine vegetation called Fucus or the Sargassum. The fossils are merely 

 casts, showing, as a rule, no structure whatever. Lesquereux says marine vegetation 

 readily disintegrates and passes into a gelatinous, half-fluid matter, which penetrates 

 the sand, so that the lowest strata of the great heaps thrown up by the waves and 

 exposed to atmospheric action, do not generally preserve traces of their organ- 

 isms for more than a year. The fossil forms may have been harder, and contained less 

 gelatinous matter in their cells, and probably had only a remote resemblance to 

 the living Fucus or Sargassum, though there can be no reasonable doubt they are 

 representatives of extinct marine cryptogamous plants. 



The fossils referred to this Class have never been distributed into Orders and 

 Families. The genera are as follows: Archseophyton, Arthraria, Arthrophycus, 

 Asterophycus, Astropolithon (Graptolite?), Blastophycus, Bythotrephis, Calamo- 

 phycus, Chondrites, Conostichus, Cruziana, Dactylophycus, Dendrophycus, Dis- 

 cophycus, Dystactophycus, Eophyton, Heliophycus, Hippodophycus, Ichnophycus, 

 Licrophycus, Palaeophycus, Phytopsis, Protostigma, Rusophycus, Sphenothallua, 

 Taonurus, Trichophycus. 



The Fungi are cellular cryptogamus plants (kruptos, hidden; gamos, mar- 

 riage). They are flowerless plants, in which the fructifying organs are so minute 

 as to escape detection without a microscope. The spores are sometimes naked, and 

 in other cases inclosed in a theca. The evidence of the existence of this Class in 

 Palaeozoic rocks is extremely meager, though Lesquereux refers a species of Rhi- 

 zomorpha to it. 



The vascular cryptogamous plants flourished to such an extent in the Carbon- 

 iferous era, that it has been called the " Age of Acrogens," and the " Age of Coal- 



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