THE ORIGIN OF PLANT LIFE ON THE LAND. 113 



With all these vicissitudes it is to be observed that there is 

 no apparent elevation of type in all the long ages from the 

 Devonian to the Permian, that the Acrogens and Gymnosperms 

 of these periods are in some respects superior, in all respects 

 KH{ua\, to their modern successors, and that their history shows 

 a decadence toward the modern period; that intermediate 

 forms arrive too late to form connecting links in time, that 

 several distinct types appear together at the beginning, and 

 that all utterly and apparently simultaneously perish at the end 

 of the Palaeozoic, to make way for the entirely- new vegetation 

 of the succeeding age. Theories of evolution receive no 

 support from facts like these, though their practical signifi- 

 cant, as parts of the one great uniform scheme of nature, is 

 sufficiently manifest. 



Of what use then were these old floras ? To the naturalist, 

 vegetable life, with regard to its modern uses, is the great 

 accumulator of pabulum for the sustenance of the higher 

 forms of vital energy manifested in the animal. In the Palae- 

 ozoic this consideration sinks in importance. In the Coal 

 ])eriod we know few land animals, and these not vegetable 

 feeders, with the exception of some insects, millepedes, and 

 snails. But the Carboniferous forests did not live in vain, if 

 their only use was to store up the light and heat of those old 

 summers in the form of coal, and to remove the excess of 

 carbonic acid from the atmosphere. In the Devonian period 

 even these utilities fail, for coal does not seem to have been 

 accumulated to any great extent, and the petroleum of the 

 Devonian appears to have been produced from marine vege- 

 tation. Even with reference to theories of evolution, there seems 

 no necessity for the long continuance and frequent changes of 

 species of acrogenous plants without any perceptible elevation. 

 We may have much yet to learn of the life of the Devonian ; 

 but for the present the great plan of vegetable nature goes 

 beyond our measures of utility; and there remains only what 

 is perhaps the most wonderful and suggestive correlation of 



