Antediluvirm Zoology a?icl Bota7iy, 



26S 



ments of fossil natural history, which we shall endeavour to 

 elucidate by original or well authenticated illustrations. 



VEGETABLE REMAINS. 



No complete treatise on geological botany has hitherto 

 appeared in this country. Mr. Parkinson's first volume, it is 

 true, is dedicated to the consideration of the vegetable king- 

 dom. It contains descriptions and beautiful figures of many 

 varieties of fossil wood, plants, flowers, seeds, and fruits, from 

 various parts of Europe, and treats of the mineral and petrify- 

 ing processes to which they have been subjected. But at the 

 period this writer commenced his labours, no systematic classi- 

 fication or nomenclature had been formed, nor was it known 

 that this class of fossils was so numerous. 



The great source whence our geologists have hitherto drawn 

 their knowledge of antediluvian plants, is the splendid work, 

 the Flora dey- Vorwelt, of Count Sternberg. 



In England the coal formations are particularly rich in 

 beautifully preserved plants. So far as they admit of com- 

 parison, they approach those 

 tribes of plants which now 

 exist in warm climates, and 

 luxuriate in moist situations. 

 They consist chiefly of palms 

 and arborescent ferns (Jig. 

 48.), succulent plants, cacti, 

 euphorbiae, canes, reeds, 

 and gramina. The trunks 

 or stems thus discovered, 

 belong principally to arun- 

 dinaceous plants, approxi- 

 mating to those now known, 

 partly to the palmaceous or- 

 der, and partly to anomalous 

 forms, constituting a transition between these and the coni- 

 ferous plants. 



From the few comparisons which have been hitherto insti- 

 tuted between the plants of various distant coal fields, there 

 is reason to conclude that they have a general resemblance in 

 all parts of the world ; and, if so, it contributes to establish a 

 fact, on which much speculation has been employed, of the 

 original uniformity of climate at those remote points on the 

 earth's surface. 



In the enumeration of coal vegetation, it will be perceived 

 that it does not properly belong to hard or solid wood trees, 

 but to plants possessing a succulent, fibrous, pithy, or hollow 

 structure. The appearances presented by these vegetables 



Filicites. 

 Ferns, from coal shale. South Wales. 



