﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xliii 



ing throughout the globe. Mr. Bunbury has, I think, successfully 

 pointed out in your Journal, that the peculiarity of the carboniferous 

 climate consisted more in the humidity of the atmosphere and the 

 absence of cold, or rather the equable temperature preserved in the 

 different seasons of the year, than in its tropical heat * ; but we must 

 still presume that colder climates existed at higher elevations above 

 the sea. 



That there was really a scarcity of flowering plants, other than the 

 dicotyledonous gymnosperms, in those peculiar stations where that 

 carboniferous flora grew with which we are acquainted, is, I think, 

 most probable, for the predominance of Conifers and Ferns, Lepido- 

 dendra and Sigillarise, would tend, by the mere occupancy of space, 

 to cause other tribes to be feebly represented. This argument is not 

 based on negative evidence, for botanists conceive that they have 

 already obtained 250 species of ferns of the carboniferous sera, whereas 

 the whole of Europe does not produce at present more than fifty spe- 

 cies of the same family. 



The flora of the primary period, or of the carboniferous and Per- 

 mian strata, is called by Brongniart the age of Acrogens, from the 

 great number of Ferns and Lycopodiums which then flourished ; and 

 he styles the secondary period the age of Gymnosperms, because the 

 Conifers and Cycads then prevailed in great numbers. But before 

 we pass to the vegetation of the secondary rocks, we are met with a 

 geological point of controversy of the utmost moment, on which we 

 ought, if possible, to make up our minds, as it affects nearly all our 

 generalizations when we contrast the fossil plants of the primary and 

 those of the secondary rocks. Are the species of the Alpine anthra- 

 cite palaeozoic or secondary, carboniferous or liassic ? If the plants 

 of Petit-CcEur near Moutiers in the Tarantaise, all identical with spe- 

 cies of the carboniferous eera, and unmixed with any of an oolitic 

 character, be correctly referred to the lias, such an exception to the 

 rule of the restriction of particular assemblages of organic forms to 

 particular eras, shakes every theory which rests on purely palseonto- 

 logical data to its very foundation. In the year 1828 M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart published an account of twenty-five species of fossil plants 

 from Petit-Coeur, twenty of which he was able to identify with car- 



* Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc. 1846, vol. ii. p. 87, 



