FRONTISPIECE 



Restoration of a scene along a sluggish creek in Texas and New 

 Mexico during the late Carboniferous (Upper Pennsylvanian) and early- 

 Permian times. The lowlands of this period doubtless swarmed with 

 reptiles such as shown in the picture, and with other animals, now 

 extinct. Some specimens of the giant "dragon-flies" had a spread of 

 wings of two feet. The fern-like trees and the bushy plants in the fore- 

 ground are Cycadofilicales. To the right of the water are wide stretches 

 of the huge scouring rush {Calamites); on the left bank of the stream are 

 the unbranched Sigillarias (still as prominent as earlier in the coal 

 period), and on higher ground to the left the branched Lepidodendrons. 

 One must view this scene as one of many such landscapes, with ever- 

 varying detail, along streams and inlets. Cordaites, which in later 

 Devonian time made the first great forests of which there is record, is 

 still present, though not shown. So, too, there are hidden in the recesses 

 of the forest the forerunners of the modern coniferous types, as well as 

 other forms destined to give rise to the angiosperms. (Landscape from 

 Williston, adapted from Neumayr.) 



