340 FIELD, FOREST AND FARM 



bore flowers. The splendors of the corolla were not 

 to appear until a later period. 



"For the most part there were only tall stems or 

 stalks, without branches, of equal size from top to 

 bottom, and furrowed with channels or dotted with 

 large points arranged in spiral lines. At the top 

 a tuft of enormous leaves balanced itself, the under 

 surface of each leaf bearing elongated or rounded 

 swellings containing a fine brown dust, each grain 

 of which was a seed for the propagation of the plant. 



"Plants that thus bear their seeds, or spores, in 

 powdery masses on the under side of the leaves are 

 called ferns. A number of species flourish in our 

 part of the world. They are unpretentious plants, 

 fond of shade and coolness. Old damp walls, rocks 

 that drip water drop by drop, the darkest corners of 

 our woods — these are the customary haunts of the 

 fern. 



"A short underground stock and a sparse cluster 

 of leaves, very elegantly shaped, it is true, consti- 

 tute our native ferns. Those of the coal epoch were 

 of a different pattern. Some of them displayed at 

 the top of a stem as tall as our poplars a cluster of 

 leaves five or six meters in length. They are called 

 tree-ferns, and they contributed the greater part of 

 the coal-forming material. 



"The accompanying illustration will give you an 

 idea of what the vegetation of that period must have 

 looked like. What strange trees! How different 

 from our oaks and maples and hemlocks ! The soil 

 is a liquid mud in which lie and rot the tree-trunks 



