THE DEVONIAN AGE. 105 



as now, to strengthen and protect the stems of trees 

 not fitted for lateral expansion. Beyond this mass 

 of vegetation, and rising on the slopes of the distant 

 hills, we see great trees that look like pines. We 

 cannot approach them more nearly; but here on the 

 margin of a creek we see some drift-trunks, that 

 have doubtless been carried down by a land flood. 

 One of them is certainly a pine, in form and structure 

 of its wood very like those now living in the southern 

 hemisphere ; it is a Dadoxylon. Another is different, 

 its sides rough and gnarled, and marked with huge 

 irregular ridges; its wood loose, porous, and stringy, 

 more like the bark of modern pines, yet having rings 

 of growth and a true bark of its own, and sending 

 forth large branches and roots. It is the strange and 

 mysterious Prototaxites, one of the wonders of the 

 Devonian land, and whose leaves and fruits would 

 be worth their weight in gold in our museums, could 

 we only procure them. A solitary fragment further 

 indicates that in the yet unpenetrated solitudes of the 

 Devonian forests there may be other trees more like 

 our ordinary familiar friends of the modern woods , 

 but of these we know as yet but little. What in- 

 habitants have these forests ? All that we yet know 

 are a few large insects, relatives of our modern May- 

 flies, flitting with broad veined wings over the 

 stagnant waters in which their worm-like larvae dwell, 

 and one species at least assuming one of the properties 

 of the grasshopper tribe, and enlivening the otherwise 

 silent groves with a cricket-like chirp, the oldest 



