282 NOTES. 



(24.) From the experiment of Professor Lindley, which seemed to 

 prove that dicotyledonous trees perish in water sooner than the 

 monocotyledons, it has been said that, probably, we only find the 

 carbonigenous vegetation to be lowly because the higher trees were 

 incapable of being preserved. It is, however, remarkable, that the 

 dicotyledons abound in the tertiary strata, which could hardly have 

 been the case if they were incapable of resisting the effects of 

 water. The objectors would need, at least, to account for these 

 trees withstanding dissolution in that age, if they are to be supposed 

 to have perished so readily in the earlier epoch. It is also to be 

 remarked, that the dicotyledons do exist in the carbonigenous era ; 

 only they are extremely few. Finding simple sea-plants in the 

 earlier fossiliferous strata and dicotyledons abundant in the last, 

 while the intermediate carbonic period presents the intermediate 

 kinds of plants in abundance, and only a scantling of any higher 

 forms, it appears the most legitimate inference in the case, that the 

 earth has witnessed a botanical progress connected with time, and 

 only reached the highest vegetable forms at a comparatively recent 

 period; thus presenting a history entirely analogous to what 

 geology shows us of the animal kingdom. 



(25.) A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the British 

 Museum, is forty-five feet high. 



(26.) SeeWitham on the Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables, 

 1834. 



(27.) See remarks on the period of occurrence of sauroid fishes 

 in a subsequent note. 



(28.) " Two species [of insects], belonging to the family of Cur- 

 culionidae, have been found in the coal-fields of Coalbrook Dale, as 

 well as a neuropterous insect, which closely resembles the genus 

 Corydalis now living in Carolina; also a libellula, or an insect 

 related to the Phasmidae. * * Count Sternberg has likewise 

 announced the discovery of a fossil scorpion in the coal-measures at 

 Chomle, near Badnitz, in Bohemia. It is easily conceivable that, as 

 insects could only leave traces of their existence in exceptional and 

 very rare instances, it is very improbable that we should ever have a 

 satisfactory knowledge of this part of the fauna of the ancient forma- 

 tions." D'Archiac and De Vernevil on the Fossils of the Older 

 Deposits, <tc. Geol Trans, vi. (2rf ser.) 330. 



(29.) In Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, foot-marks, in- 

 cluding those of a biped animal, apparently of the order Grallee, 

 besides several reptilian vestiges, have been found in strata of the 

 carboniferous era " a coarse-grained sandstone about 150 feet 

 beneath the largest of our coal-seams, and near 800 feet beneath the 

 topmost stratum of the coal formation." The reptilian foot-marks 



