SEWARD: FOSSIL CLIMATES, 153 
Middle India, and Australia being in direct communication. Over 
this continent—for or against whose existence we have no time to 
discuss the arguments—there obtained a cold or even Arctic climate, 
which drove north the older types of Carboniferous plants—traces 
of which have been found in Australia and South Africa underlying 
the Glossopteris beds—and gave birth to a mountain flora or Permo- 
Carboniferous Alpine vegetation. Allowing that this is a theory not 
unassailed by arguments whose weight calls for careful consideration, 
we will further consider what are the main reasons which compel us 
to depart from the orthodox views as to the Coal Period vegetation 
and climate. Allowing the occurrence in the southern hemisphere 
of this Glossopteris flora, and the fact that even in North America 
certain species of Carboniferous plants are found unknown in 
Europe, that differences are noticed in Arctic Carboniferous plants, 
and again in the China flora of the same age, we must still admit a 
widely-spread typical Carboniferous vegetation. But does this neces- 
sarily imply a uniform tropical climate? As was pointed out years 
ago and recently insisted upon by Neumayr, we must take into account 
the fact that the Carboniferous plants—well adapted in their very 
nature to easy and wide distribution by spores—had not the 
formidable rivalry of the higher plants, the Monocotyledons and 
Dicotyledons, to contend against, and could spread over wide 
areas without having to yield to superior force in the struggle for 
existence. 
In a lecture delivered in Vienna in 1889, Prof. Neumayr, 
Speaking on this subject, remarks:—‘It is not in the towering 
primeval forests of India and Brazil, nor the mangrove swamps of 
tropical coasts, but in the moors of the sub-Arctic zone that plant- 
remains are now being stored up in a form that, in the course of 
geological ages, may become converted into beds of coal’ (‘ Nature,’ 
loc. cit.). He points out how the greatest deposits of coal are 
restricted to a zone outside the tropics; within the tropics the 
iferous times, or on the physical conditions favourable for the 
accumulation and conversion into coal of the Palzozoic forests, 
we are compelled to depart from the old opinions, and wit thout 
dogmatising i in definite terms, must allow a difference in temperature 
in different latitudes and the existence. even in the remote Carbon- 
iferous age, of sharply-contrasted floras. 
Without stopping to particularise as to Triassic climates, one may 
Temark, even in this more recent period, a striking uniformity in the 
general character of the flora. In the same period we notice an 
‘May 180: 1891. 
