226 PLANT-LIFE 



various parts which can be differentiated by the expert, 

 who by comparison and relation of parts from various 

 coal balls can make a restoration of a particular plant. 

 It is owing to the existence of these pertifactions in coal 

 seams that so much has been learned of the vegetation 

 of Palaeozoic times. 



The reader may deem it significant that the stratified 

 rocks prior to the Newer Palaeozoic have so little to tell 

 us about the plant-life of the past, and he may also 

 raise his eyebrows when he learns that in the Carbonif- 

 erous strata we find records of plants very well advanced 

 in their peculiar ways. Even in the strata immediately 

 below the Carboniferous — viz., the Devonian (including 

 the Old Eed Sandstone rendered classic by the re- 

 searches of Hugh Miller) — such fossil plants as have been 

 found are very similar to those of Carboniferous times. 

 Some of the main groups of plants now extant were 

 represented in the Palseozoic Era. Are these facts dead 

 against the evolutionary theory ? Assuredly not. 

 Following the fossil record from the earliest reliable 

 remains to recent times, we find ample evidence of 

 development — of evolution — and we realize the fact of 

 the total extinction of complete groups of plants in the 

 progress of the aeons. And it is unquestionable that the 

 highest plants of all — the flowering plants, the crowning 

 product of the vegetable world — have arisen more recently 

 than any other group. If there is such a dearth of 

 remains of Algae and other simple plants in rocks older 

 than the Newer Palaeozoic — and in the latter we come 

 upon quite complex tjrpes — it is not because complex 

 types were primitive; rather ought we to say that these 

 types were better adapted to preservation than the 



