LAURENTIAN AND EAELY PALEOZOIC. 



21 



have been allied to the club-mosses. This seems to be 

 all that we at present know of land-vegetation in the 

 Silnro-Cambrian.. So far as the remains go, they indicate 

 1 the presence of the 

 Ifamilies of Ehizo- 

 jcarps and of Lyco- 

 ipods. 



If we ascend 

 into the Upper Si- 

 lurian, or Siluri- 

 an proper, the evi- 

 dences of land veg- 

 etation somewhat 

 increase. In 1859 1 

 described, in " The 

 Journal of the Geo- 

 logical Society," of 

 London, a remark- 

 able tree from the 

 Lower Erian of 

 Gasp6, under the 

 name Prototaxites, 

 but for which I 

 now prefer the 

 name Nematophy- 

 ton. When in Lon- 

 don, in 1870, I obtained permission to examine cer- 

 tain specimens of spore-cases or seeds from the Upper 

 Ludlow (Silurian) formation of England, and which 

 had been described by Sir 'Joseph Hooker under the 

 name Pachytheca. In the same slabs with these I 

 found fragments of fossil wood identical with those 

 of the Gaspe plant. Still later I recognised similar 

 fragments aasociated also with Pachytheca in the Silu- 

 rian of Cape Bon Ami, !N"ew Bninswick. Lastly, Dr. 

 Hicks has discovered similar wood, and also similar 



Fio. 1. — Protamnulana EarTcneam (Niohol- 

 Bon), a probable Bbkocarp of the Ordo- 

 vician period. 



