VI. 



FOSSIL FOEESTS. 



OTHING in the history 

 of the vegetable world 

 is more interesting 

 than the records of 

 buried trees, whose 

 limbs have been turned 

 into coal or stone, pre- 

 serving, however, with 

 singular clearness, in 

 trunk, branches, leaves, 

 flowers, and fruit, the form and markings which 

 distinguished them when growing under the con- 

 ditions that were, with more or less of suddenness, 

 changed by some convulsion of Nature. With 

 the forms retained in the coal measures with such 

 distinctness as to enable the scientist to read the 

 history of the past, most readers are familiar. 



