8 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
in the bowels of the earth, packed into solid sand- 
stone cases, and stored up in the smallest compass 
by the mighty pressure of ponderous rock-presses, 
constituting the chief source of our domestic com- 
fort, and of nearly all our commercial greatness. 
_A coal-bed is, in fact, a hortus siccus of extinct 
cryptogamic vegetation, bringing before the imagi- 
nation a vista of the ancient world, with which no ar- 
rangement of landscape or combination of scenery 
can now be compared ; and gazing upon its dusky 
contents, our minds are baffled in aiming to com- 
prehend the bulk of original material, the seasons 
of successive growth, and the immeasurable ages 
which passed while decay, and maceration, and 
chemical changes prepared the fallen vegetation 
for fuel. If the specimens of plants thus strangely 
preserved teach us one truth more than another, 
it is this, that size and development are terms. of 
no meaning when applied to a low or a high type 
of organization. The cryptogamia of the old 
world, the earliest planting in the new-formed soil, 
are in bulk, as well as in elegance and beauty of 
form, unrivalled by the finest specimens of the 
modern forest. The little and the great, the re- 
cent and the extinct, were equally the objects of 
Nature’s care, and were all modelled with a skill 
and finish that left nothing to be added. 
And as in early geological epochs they occupied 
