488 REPORT— 1883. 
been made to construct a genealogical tree of the vegetable kingdom. That the 
Cryptogams and Gymnosperms made their appearance, and continued to flourish 
on this earth, long prior to the appearance of the Monocotyledonous and Dicoty- 
ledonous flowering plants, is at all events a conclusion justified by our present 
knowledge so far as it goes. Every one of the supposed Palms, Aroids and 
other Monocotyledons has now been ejected from the lists of Carboniferous 
plants, and the Devonian rocks are equally devoid of them. The generic rela- 
tions of the Carboniferous vegetation to the higher flowering plants found in the 
newer strata have no light thrown upon them by these Paleozoic forms. These 
latter do afford us a few plausible hints respecting some of their Cryptogamie 
and Gymnospermous descendants, and we know that the immediate ancestors of 
many of them flourished during the Devonian age, but here our knowledge practi- 
cally ceases. Of their still older genealogies scarcely any records have been dis- 
covered. When the registries disappeared, not only had the grandest forms of 
Cryptogamic life that ever lived attained their highest development, but even the 
more lordly Gymnosperms had become a widely diffused and flourishing race. If 
there is any truth in the doctrine of evolution, and especially if long periods 
of time were necessary for a world-wide development of lower into higher races, 
a terrestrial vegetation must have existed during a vast succession of epochs 
ere the noble Lycopods began their prolonged career. Long prior to the Carboni- 
ferous age they had not only made this beginning, but during that age they had 
diffused themselves over the entire earth. We find them equally in the old world 
and in the new. We discover them from amid the ice-clad rocks of Bear Island 
and Spitzbergen to Brazil and New South Wales. Unless we are prepared to 
concede that they were simultaneously developed at these remote centres, we must 
recognise the incaleulable amount of time requisite to spread them thus from their 
birth-place, wherever that may have been, to the ends of the earth. Whatever may 
haye been the case with the southern hemisphere, we have also clear evidence that 
in the northern one much of this wide distribution must have been accomplished 
prior to the Devonian age. What has become of this pre-Devonian flora? Some 
contend that the lower cellular forms of plant life were not preserved because their 
delicate tissues were incapable of preservation. But why should this be the case ? 
Such plants are abundantly preserved in Tertiary strata, why not equally in Paleo- 
zoic ones? The explanation must surely be sought, not in their incapability of being 
preserved, but in the operation of other causes. But the Carboniferous rocks throw 
another impediment in the way of constructors of these genealogical trees. Whilst 
Carboniferous plants are found at hundreds of separate localities, widely distributed 
over the globe, the number of spots at which these plants are found displaying any 
internal structure, is extremely few. It would be difficult to enumerate a score 
of such spots. Yet each of those favoured localities has revealed to us forms of 
plant life of which the ordinary plant-bearing shales and sandstones of the same 
localities show no traces. It seems, therefore, that whilst there was a general 
resemblance in the mere conspicuous forms of Carboniferous vegetation from the 
Arctic circle to the extremities of the southern hemisphere, each locality had 
special forms that flourished in it either exclusively or at least abundantly, whilst 
rare elsewhere. It would be easy, did time allow, to give many proofs of the 
truth of this statement. Our experiences at Oldham and Halifax, at Arran and 
Burntisland, at St. Etienne and Autun, alike tell us that such is the case. If these 
few spots which admit of being searched by the aid of the microscope have 
recently revealed so many hitherto unknown treasures, is it not fair to conclude 
that corresponding novelties would have been furnished by all the other plant- 
producing localities if these plants had been preserved in a state capable of being 
similarly investigated ? I have no doubt about this matter; hence I conclude that 
there is a vast variety of Carboniferous plants of which we have as yet seen no 
traces, but every one of which must have played some part, however humble, in 
the development of the plant races of later ages. We can only hope that time 
will bring these now hidden witnesses into the hands of future paleontologists. 
Meanwhile, though far from wishing to check the construction of any legitimate 
hypothesis calculated to aid scientific inquiry, I would remind every too ambitious 
