﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xli 



some are true Coniferae ; and a much larger proportion belong to an 

 anomalous family, departing very widely from any living type, to which 

 the Sigillaria, Noeggerathia, and Asterophyllite are referred. They 

 united some of the characters now peculiar to the Cryptogamia and 

 dicotyledons respectively. It is very remarkable that none of the 

 exogens of Lindley or dicotyledonous angiosperms of Brongniart, 

 which comprise four-fifths of the living flora of the globe, have yet 

 been discovered in the coal-measures, and a very small number, fifteen 

 species only, of monocotyledons. If several of these last are true 

 palms, an opinion to which Messrs. Lindley, Unger, Corda, and other 

 botanists of note strongly incline, the question, whether any of the 

 most highly organized plants occur in the primary or palaeozoic strata, 

 must at once be answered in the affirmative. If you wish to know 

 how far the determination of these palms may be doubtful, I refer 

 you to Adolphe Brongniart' s discussion on the affinities of Musaeites, 

 Palmacites, Musocarpum, Trigonocarpum, and others in his recently 

 published Essay on the genera of Fossil Plants*. 



When we learn from botanists that there are now 11,000 species 

 of living European plants, we must of course regard the 500 species 

 of the coal at present known as a mere fragment of an ancient flora. 

 Were we to explore the deltas of the Po and the Rhone as diligently 

 as we have examined the coal-measures, should we obtain the remains 

 of 500 determinable species, even now before the obliterating hand 

 of time has effaced many of the markings by the destroying effect of 

 heat, pressure, the percolation of water, and other causes? M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart does not seem to suspect that the eocene flora was inferior 

 in variety and richness to that which now decorates the earth, and 

 yet he only describes 209 species of eocene plants. 



If we wish to be convinced of the probable extent of our ignorance 

 of the real state of the vegetation of the earth when the coal was 

 formed, it may be well to reflect how seldom the fructification of co- 

 niferous trees has been met with in the coal-measures. Mr. Bunbury 

 informs me that he never heard of more than one example, — that men- 

 tioned in the work of Lindley and Hutton, under the title of Pinus 

 anthracina. I never saw any one fossil fir-cone of this age, either in 

 the rocks or the museums of North America or Europe. Yet every 



* Tableau des Veget. Foss., Diet. Univ. d'Hisloire Naturelle. Paris, 1849. 



