152 SEWARD: FOSSIL CLIMATES. 
temperature, proved by the world-wide distribution of typical coal- 
measure fossils; violent rains—as to-day in the tropics—pitted the 
sands of the Carboniferous flats; whether, indeed, these showers 
were of tropical intensity is beyond us to ee that rain there 
was, is proved by the sandstone rain-prin 
At the British Association Meeting at  wesdeat Dr. Blanford 
threw out the suggestion that evidence is not wanting in favour of 
distinct floras in the Carboniferous period. Not only have we 
a highland flora and a plain flora—as previously recognised by 
Godwin-Austen and others—but in the southern hemisphere the 
characteristic Carboniferous flora is replaced by another set of 
plants, destined in later periods to extend over a wide area, and 
gradually drive out the Coal Measure forms which held on for 
a longer period in the northern hemisphere. 
To examine the evidence against the generally received opinion 
of a uniform Carboniferous flora. We shall find it more convenient 
to include in one system the Carboniferous and Permian rocks; the 
plants of the two differ rather in degree than in kind, and some 
of the plant-bearing beds of the southern hemisphere cannot be 
regarded in the present state of our kn nowledge as undoubtedly 
te) 
Permo-Carboniferous flora is generally spoken of as the Glossopteris 
flora, from the widespread occurrence of 5% reticulately-veined 
tongue-shaped leaves, presumably those of a fer 
In the Salt Range of Northern India, in more 2 eoditheerly districts 
in the Indian Peninsula, in South Africa and Australia, there 
are interbedded with Glossopteris-bearing strata thick deposits of 
a stiff clay, full of rounded and scratched stones-—deposits referred 
by the majority of geologists most anda to express an opinion 
on the subject to the action of ice. e have, then, in these several 
countries a certain flora—and, indeed, foreshadowed in beds of the- 
flora, and much more closely allied to our Triassic vegetation. 
With this flora are associated in certain districts ice-scratched blocks. 
The late Prof. Neumayr, of Vienna, regarded this southern flora as 
a continental one ; in Permo-Carboniferous times, pees South an and 
Naturalist, 
