319 J. E. Teschemacher on the 
period, is very doubtful; the recent fern Vittaria, and some 
others, when without fructification, being scarcely distinguish- 
able from them. The same may also be premised of what are 
called the Cycadeæ, or Cycadites, of the Coal formation. 
It would be strange, if animals existed in quantity (which 
they did, if at all) on the quiet estuaries where the coal vege- 
tation is supposed to have grown, and been entombed, that 
their remains should not be found in abundance, in deposits 
where the finest lineaments and texture of the vegetable forms 
have been so well preserved. Indeed, the very existence of 
the coal beds themselves seems to prove that the vegetation 
of that day was not consumed by air or animals. On the 
‘other hand, if the vegetation of the subsequent periods had 
not been consumed by the atmosphere or by animals, there 
seems no valid reason why they should not also have existed 
in the state of coal. 
_ It is quite probable that a vegetation with so little nutriment 
could never have supported the enormous animals which fill 
the earth immediately afterwards. I will here offer one more 
quotation from the same work as the previous one. 
*'Then come animals, consumers of matter and producers 
of heat and force — true instruments of combustion. Itis in 
them, unquestionably, that organized matter acquires what 
may be called its highest expression. In this new capacity; 
organized matter is burnt, and, in giving out the heat or elec- 
tricity which constitutes and is a measure of our force, 1t 8 
destroyed, and returned to the atmosphere from whence it 
had originally come. The atmosphere, therefore, is the my5- 
terious link that connects the animal with the vegetable, the 
vegetable with the animal kingdom.” 
But, as there were no animals, this link was not then re- 
quired, and the reflection hence arising is, that an atmosp^ 
more appropriate then prevailed. These recent developments 
of science render highly probable the philosophical theory of 
Brongniart, of the existence of an atmosphere, at er 
highly charged with carbonic acid gas. As this is a point © 
