126 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



quence of fossil insects with their companions of vegetation re- 

 veals many interesting and cumulative facts. In the Carbonifer- 

 ous period, as pictured in the coal, we find vegetation consisting 

 entirely of ferns, club-mosses, and " horse-tail," in luxuriant growth, 

 as well as the most primitive pines the lowest in organization 

 among the true flowering plants. The companion insects were 

 of the dragon-fly, locust, and beetle tribes. Inasmuch as these 

 are insects that rarely frequent flowers, we find that the com- 

 panion plants are all flowerless genera, that require no insect aid 

 for perpetuation, or of trees whose existing counterparts white 

 pine and spruce, etc. even to-day ignore the existence of in- 

 sects, and depend wholly upon the wind in the scattering of their 

 pollen and consequent perpetuation. 



The Reptilian age, which followed after the annihilation of all 

 preceding species, we find ushered in by a luxuriant growth of 

 seemingly freshly created types of the previous mentioned tribe 

 of plants, followed in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous pe- 

 riods by the successive multiplication of Palms and Cycads 

 wind fertilized plants again succeeded at last by a countless 

 host of blossoming trees and flowery fragrant vegetation: oaks 

 and willows, beech, alder, tulip-tree and blossoming herbs and 

 shrubs, accompanied by a myrmidon representation of all the 

 tribes of insects now known. In the light of modern scientific 

 revelation who shall question the analogy or significance of this 

 simultaneous creation, or that the prehistoric bee and butterfly 

 were called into being obedient to the same design which we see 

 them now fulfilling among the fragrant blossoms of our mead- 

 ows? for fragrance had not been wasted on the desert air of 

 those earlier mesozoic times. 



"Geologists inform us," says Hugh Macmillan, "that all the 

 eras of the earth's history previous to the upper miocene were 

 destitute of perfumes. It is only when we come to the periods 

 immediately antecedent to the human that we meet with an odor- 

 iferous flora." An era of gladness in anticipation of the birth of 

 man. 



In further reinforcement bearing upon the functions and an 



