I08 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



the scale-trees, but differ from thera and from ferns in 

 general in many ways. They were possibly closely related 

 to the extinct Devonian Lycopteridece, combining character- 

 istic peculiarities of the club-mosses and the frondose ferns, 

 which Strasburger considers as the hypothetical primary 

 form of flowering plants. 



In leaving the dense forests of the primary period, which 

 were principally composed of frond ferns (Lepidodendrese 

 and Sigillariese), we pass onwards to the no less character- 

 istic pine forests of the secondary period. Thus we leave 

 the domain of the Cryptogamia, the plants forming neither 

 flowers nor seeds, and enter the second main division of the 

 vegetable kingdom, namely, the sub-kingdom of the Phanero- 

 gamia, flowering plants forming seeds. This division, so rich 

 in forms, containing the principal portion of the present 

 vegetable world, and especially the majority of plants living 

 on land, is certainly of a much more recent date than the 

 division of Cryptogamia. For it can have developed out 

 of the latter only in the course of the palaeolithic period. 

 We can with full assurance maintain that, during the whole 

 archilithic period, hence during the first and longer half of 

 the organic history of the earth, no flowering plants as yet 

 existed, and that they first developed during the primary 

 period out of Cryptogamia of the fern kind. The anatomical 

 and embryological relation of Phanerogamia to the latter 

 is so close, that from it we can with certainty infer their 

 genealogical connection, that is, their true blood relation- 

 ship. Flowering plants cannot have directly arisen out of 

 thallus plants, nor out of mosses ; but only out of ferns, or 

 Filicines. Most probably the scaled ferns, or Lepidophyta, 

 and more especially amongst these the Lycopodiacere, forms 



