Antediluvian Zoology and Botany. 263 
ments of fossil natural history, which we shall endeavour to 
elucidate by original or well authenticated illustrations. 
VEGETABLE REMAINS. 
No complete treatise on geological botany has hitherto 
appear ed in this country. Mr. Par ‘kinson’ s first volume, it is 
true, is dedicated to the consideration of the vegetable king- 
dom. It contains descriptions and beautiful figures of many 
varieties of fossil wood, plants, flowers, seeds, and fruits, from 
various parts of Europe, and treats of the mineral and petrify- 
ing processes to which they have been subjected. But at the 
period this writer commenced his labours, no systematic classi- 
fication or nomenclature had been formed, nor was it known 
that this class of fossils was so numerous. 
The great source whence our geologists have hitherto drawn 
cas) 
their knowledge of antediluvian plants, is the splendid work, 
the Flora der at ‘orwelt, of Count Sternberg. 
In England the coal formations are particularly rich in 
beautifully preserved plants. So far as they admit of com- 
parison, they approach those 
48 tribes of plants which now 
exist in warm climates, and 
luxuriate in moist situations. 
They consist chiefly of palms 
and arborescent ferns (fe. 
48.), succulent plants, cacti, 
euphorbiz, canes, reeds, 
and gramina. The trunks 
or stems thus discovered, 
belong principally to arun- 
dinaceous plants, approxi- 
— mating to those now known, 
Ferns, from ectatiale, South Wales, partly to the palmaceous or 
der, and partly to anomalous 
forms, constituting a transition between these and the coni- 
ferous plants. 
From the few comparisons which have been hitherto insti- 
tuted between the plants of various distant coal fields, there 
is reason to conclude that they have a general resemblance in 
all parts of the world ; and, if so, it contributes to establish a 
fact, on which much speculation has been employed, of the 
original uniformity of climate at those remote points on the 
earth’s surface. 
In the enumeration of coal vegetation, it will be perceived 
that it does not properly belong to hard or solid wood trees, 
but to plants possessing a succulent, fibrous, pithy, or hollow 
structure. The appearances presented by these vegetables 
