828 REPORT— 1903. 



Devonian and Lower Carboniferous Plords, 



The earliest plants that have been found in sufficient num)3er, alid ill a state of 

 preservation which renders their identification possible, are those from Devonian 

 rocks. From Bear Island, a small remnant of land situated Avithin the Arctic 

 circle, the late I'rofessor Ileer described several Devonian plants; and more re- 

 cently Professor Nathorst, of Stockholm, has given a full account of this interesting 

 and comparatively rich flora. The relics of plant-life preserved in this Arctic 

 island carry us back through countless ages to a time when a luxuriant vegetation 

 flourished in a region now occupied by ice-bound land and polar seas. As Edward 

 Fitzgerald said, in speaking of his enjoyment of some geological book : ' Thie vision 

 of time is in itself more wonderful than all the conceptions of Dante and Milton. 

 Devonian plants have been described by Feistmantel, Etheridge, and others from 

 Australia; and the well-known Kiltorkan grits of Ireland have supplied a few 

 well-preserved impressions of the oldest land-plants disinterred from British rocks. 



As my aim is to .sketch in broad outline the general facies of the vegetation 

 which flourished at difl'erent stages in the earth's history, rather than to undertake 

 a critical examination of the evidence as to the precise geological age of the 

 plant-bearing beds, I propose to treat of Devonian and Lower Carboniferous floras 

 as constituting one phase in the evolution of the plant-world. In speaking of the 

 plants of the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous or Culm phase, it is not a.ssumed 

 that the specimens entombed in the snow-covered clitls of Dear Island were actu- 

 ally c.intemporaneous with those found in rocks of the same geological period in 

 the Southern hemisphere. The Dear Island rocks are, in the language which 

 Huxley taught us to use, homotaxial witli certain Devonian plant-bearing strata 

 in other parts of the world; they occupy the same relative position in the geo- 

 logical series. 



riomotaxy by no means implies contemporaneity ; indeed, the late Edwai'd 

 Forbes maintained that similarity of organic contents of distant formations 

 should be accepted as prima facie evidence of a difference in age. 



AVliat do we know as to the composition of the floras that flourished in the 

 later stages of the Devonian and in the latter part of the Carboniferous eraP The 

 following list, which is by no means exhaustive, represents some of the more 

 important generic types which may be very briefly described : — 



1. EuUISETALES. I lihmlpa. 



Archmocalamites. Cardiopteris. 



lodeopsis. 



2. SPHENOPHTLL.iLES. Ophalothccn. 



Sphenopln/fhwi. 

 Ciieini^trohiiti. 

 [rseitdobornia ?] 



3. Ltcopodiales. 



Lcpidodcndro)!. 

 Bothrodendro7i. 



R/iacoj)feris. 



5. CyCADOFlLICES. 



Calamcjnlys. 

 Hetermif/iuiii, 

 Lyyinodcn droit . 



6. GTJINOSrEEM.E. 

 4. FiLICALES. j (CORDAITALES.) 



Archreopferis. . Cordaitn, 



Adiantitcs. I'iti/s. 



In Anh(cocaliimites we have the oldest example of an undoubted Equisetaceous 

 genus. The structure of its comparativelj' thick and woody stem is practically 

 identical with that of our common Briti.sh type of Ca/.amites, one ot' the most 

 abundant of the Coal period genera, while the strobilus differed in no essential 

 feature from that of a modern Horsetail. The genus Chfirostrobus, founded in 

 1897 by Dr. D. H. Scott on a single specimen of a petrified cone discovered in the 

 rich volcanic beds of Lower Carboniferous age at Pettycur on the shores of the 



