RECENT PANDA NE^. 377 



However remote may have been the time when these 

 Prototj^es of the family of Cycadea? ceased to exist, the fact 

 of their containing so many combinations of pecuUarities 

 identical with those of existing Cycadeae, connects these an- 

 cient arrangements in the Physiology of fossil Botany, with 

 those which now characterize one of the most remarkable 

 families among existing plants. In virtue of these peculiar 

 structures, the living Cycadese form an important link, which 

 no other Tribe of plants supplies, connecting the great family 

 of Coniferas, with the families of Palms and Ferns, and thus 

 fill up a blank, which would otherwise have separated these 

 three great natural divisions of dicotyledonous, monocotyle- 

 donous, and acot3dedonous plants. 



The full development of this link in the Secondary periods 

 of Geological history, affords an important evidence of the 

 Uniformity of Design which now pervades, and ever has 

 pervaded, all the laws of vegetable life. 



Facts like these are inestimably precious to the Natural 

 Theologian ; for they identify, as it were the Artificer, by 

 details of manipulation throughout his work. They appeal 

 to the Physiologist, in language more commanding than hu- 

 man Eloquence; the voice of very stocks and stones, that 

 have been buried for countless ages in the deep recesses of 

 the earth, proclaiming the universal agency of One all-direct- 

 ing, all-sustaining Creator, in whose Will and Power, these 

 harmonious systems originated, and by whose Universal 

 Providence, they are, and have at all times been main- 

 tained. 



Fossil Pandanece. 



The Pandanesc, or Screw-Pines, form a monocotyledo- 

 nous family which now grows only in the warmer zones, 

 and chiefly within the influence of the sea ; they abound in 

 the Indian Archipelago, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. 

 Their aspect is that of gigantic Pine apple plants having ar- 

 borescent stems. (See PI. 63, Fig. 1.) 



32* 



