240 



the Upper Ooal-Measiires, aud, ia Europe, pass upward and into the 

 Permian. 



A summary sketch of the flora of the Carboniferous cannot even give 

 an idea of its luxuriance and fecundity. From the immense amount of 

 materials which it has given to the production of the coal, and from 

 its general characters, it indicates, for the conditions of the atmosphere 

 at this period, an extremely humid, rather than a very warm climate. 

 The whole atmosphere was impregnated with vapor, and, in consequence, 

 "with a proportionate amount of carbonic acid. These elements played 

 the part then that they do now, promoting the activity of the vegetation to 

 the highest degree, especially that of the Ferns and the Lycopodiacem^ 

 which, by their present vegetation, show their partiality for foggy coun- 

 tries or the shade of -humid forests, and of the Equisetacece, which live 

 in swamps. The ferns were of much larger size then than they are now, 

 either as bushy species or as trees. Fossilized trunks of ferns have 

 been found in the Ohio coal-fields measuring more than one foot in 

 diameter; while at our epoch, and even in the tropical regions, the 

 trunks are rarely half as large. The stems of our present species of 

 Lycopods and Horsetails are scarcely half an inch thick, while trunks 

 of Sigillaria and Lepidodendron have been recorded as measuring two 

 feet in diameter, and, as remarked above, the stems of the Catamites 

 vary from two to eight inches in thickness. 



This giant vegetation was not, on account of its huge proportions, 

 deprived of beauty ; on the contrary, here, as everywhere, nature seems 

 to have given splendor to its work in proportion to, and as a compensa- 

 tion for, the deprivation of animal life. The harmonious elegance of the 

 coal flora is clearly manifested by its remains preserved by fossilization. 

 The trunks of fern-trees, as those of Sigillaria and of Lepidodendron, 

 of an exact cylindrical shape and of the same size in their whole length, 

 finely carved upon their bark in spiral or vertical rows of scars, of 

 diversified and always symmetrical and elegant patterns, represent the 

 most elaborate designs of architecture. They are like fluted columns 

 of Corinthian or Doric order, covered from base to top by garlands and 

 arabesques, and crowned by capitals of equally elaborate style. These, 

 adorned by depending fronds of parasitic ferns, support, as roofs, 

 spreading recurved branches, arches, cupolas, domes, painted by the 

 multiple forms of fern-leaves, more diversified and more graceful and 

 fair than could be any ornamentation inspired by the imagination and 

 executed by the skill of the greatest painter. Under this canopy and 

 in this dark temple of nature, wherein, as in the great cathedrals of old, 

 a gloomy, subdued light penetrates only by bow-windows, fringed and 

 latticed by interlacing ferns and branches, the ground is strewn by 

 vegetable debris entombed under mounds of verdure. Upon the wide 

 open surface of the swamps and bogs, the vegetable life still manifests 

 its power by extending, over the whole, thick carpets of water-plants 

 with the interlaced floating rhizomas of Stigmaria, over which are 

 raised and supported groups of Galaniites, whose graceful branchless 

 stems recall the forms of Moorish minarets when seen from great dis- 

 tances on approaching the borders of the sandy deserts. There is not 

 a paleontologist whose admiration has not been deeply excited by the 

 study of the fossil remains of the flora of the Coal formation. Some 

 have tried to represent its aspect by the design of the painter ; but 

 designs, like descriptions, are vain in an attempt of this kind. 



From the Carboniferous period, there is in this country an immense 

 interruption in the succession of the geological formations, and conse- 

 quently a corresponding blank in that of the geological floras. The Ameri- 



