n8 



Plants. 



Respecting the vegetation of the country there is 

 little to say, for the ferns and lepidodendrons afford 

 but feeble and fragmentary evidence. It may have 

 been that the whole region stood at a comparatively 

 high and bleak level, or it may be that the plant-bear- 

 ing localities remain to be discovered. This, however, 

 we know, that in North America, in equivalent strata, 

 there lie buried the remains of a large and luxuriant 

 flora, which generically has close affinities with that of 

 the succeeding Carboniferous Epoch. Such plants as we 

 have lie, some at the base, and others near the top of the 

 British Old Eed Sandstone, which, indeed, in some areas 

 gradually merges into the Carboniferous strata, that, 

 under varying marine and wide-spread terrestrial con- 

 ditions, form the next stage of one long Continental 

 Epoch. 



