74 RAMBLING THOUGHTS IN A HANLEY MARL PIT. 



to say that the calamites were all fast livers.* They drank, 

 I mean imbibed, a good deal, probably led into the habit 

 by the stigmarias, a family of doubtful character, who drank 

 to such an extent that you will not be surprised to hear 

 that they were usually under water, and are now probably 

 extinct. The calamites, moreover, like many fast young 

 ladies and gentlemen of the present day, were so decidedly 

 horsy as to be supposed by M. Brongniart to have been 

 allied to the equisetacas. Very degenerate representatives 

 now exist only a few feet in height, and with stems even 

 in tropical regions of only an inch in diameter. 



But I must leave these dry botanical descriptions and 

 definitions, and say a word or two on the supposed con- 

 ditions under which these materials for coal were deposited. 

 The luxuriant vegetation of the coal period has been sup- 

 posed to indicate a moist atmosphere and warm climate, for 

 the large succulent plants and arborescent ferns which 

 abound in the coal measures could only, it has been thought, 

 have grown to their vast size with much moisture, and an 

 atmosphere so moist could alone be obtained in a hot 

 climate. At one time it was thought that the existence 

 of such a climate at a former period in these latitudes, 

 known now only within the tropics, necessarily involved a 

 wholly distinct condition of things throughout the globe to 

 that existing in the present day. Careful observations, 

 however, conducted in a philosophical manner, now point 

 to this result, that the same laws of nature then obtained 

 and the same causes were then in force as at the present 

 period, and that changes of climate fully sufficient to 



* NOTE. It will be seen by Mr. Ward's paper, following the present, 

 that he has settled that the fossil is not a calamite. Not doubting the 

 accuracy of that determination, the observations are left in the text as 

 delivered. 



