Count de Sdporta — On the Ancient Plant- World. 263 



B, G), for instance, where the tin ground is more than sixty feet 

 below the sea-level, whilst the estuarine deposits overlying the forest 

 bed prove that the subsidence was progressive. Also, if the forests 

 were submerged according to the low district hypothesis, they must 

 have flourished under geographical conditions identical with the 

 present, and yet these conditions have proved unfavourable to their 

 growth on the present low lands. On the other hand, it cannot be 

 argued that the submerged forests are mere rafts of drift wood, 

 stranded with vegetable matter borne down by rivers, and finally 

 buried beneath the sea sands. The traces of submerged forests are 

 too numerous and too extensive (1, 7, 8) to be thus accounted for; in 

 several cases, moreover, the roots are said to occur in situ (3, 5, 11, 

 ?6), and the elytra of beetles have been found (1, 6). Mr. 

 Godwin- Austen (Q. J.G-.S. vol. vi. p. 93, etc.) says: "It is diminished 

 area and elevation which at present unfit the West of England to 



produce that growth of oak and gigantic fir which seems to 



have clothed every portion of the region of Dartmoor, and which 

 would still more be unfitted for it when at its lower Pleistocene 

 level. On such low districts, however, and in a climate modified by 

 a surrounding sea, some portion of a previous flora might have 

 been enabled to live on." By substituting the words " at a few feet 

 below its present" for "at its lower Pleistocene," the passage reads 

 in accordance with my ideas. 



[To be concluded in our next Number.) 



1TOTIGES OIF 1 MEMOIRS. 



The Plant-World befoee the Appearance of Man. 



MLE COMTE DE SAPORTA has recently pointed out ] that 

 i life was aquatic before it became amphibious, and amphibious 

 before it became aerial, and that terrestrial life is but the latest ex- 

 pression of the sequence that took its initial point of departure in 

 the ocean. The seas that deposited the Laurentian and Huronian 

 rocks, 50,000 feet in thickness, contain only the Ehizopod Eozoon. 

 The Cambrians of Britain and Sweden give but 50 species of primi- 

 tive types, marine vegetables, a few Sponges, Corals, and Echino- 

 derms, Brachiopods alone representing the Mollusca, which gradu- 

 ally spread from their first birthplace in the Polar Ocean to other 

 basins, no cause formerly operating to limit their extension. In 

 Silurian times Crustacea were alone represented by Trilobites, which 

 occurred in profusion, disappearing suddenly in the Coal-measures, 

 and the order is now only represented by Limulus. Similarly, at 

 the close of the Secondary epoch, the Ammonites as suddenly cease 

 to exist. 



The most ancient terrestrial Vertebrates show traces of affinities 

 with the Fishes on one side, and the Batrachians on the other, and 

 the Beptilian affinities of Archceopteryx are commented on ; the 



1 Le Monde des Plantes avant apparition de l'homme. Paris. J. Masson. 1879. 



