CHAPTER XIV 



GENERAL RESULTS 



THE first broad conclusion arrived at from the study 

 of fossil botany — the great relative antiquity of the 

 Vascular Cryptogams and Gymnosperms, as compared 

 with the Angiospermous Flowering Plants — still holds 

 good, though we should now state this fundamental 

 generalisation in rather different terms from those used 

 by its original author, the great Brongniart. 1 The 

 lower Seed-plants were more prominent in Palaeozoic 

 times than Brongniart was aware, and differently con- 

 stituted, for while his Asterophylliteae and Sigillarieae 2 

 have proved to be Cryptogamic families, the ranks of 

 the Spermophyta have received a more than equivalent 

 accession in the Pteridosperms, now transferred to them 

 from the Ferns. Brongniart's conclusion was far from 

 being an obvious one at the time, for he and his con- 

 temporaries still included the Gymnosperms under 

 Dicotyledons, so that in recognising the much higher 

 antiquity of the former the palaeontologist anticipated 

 the results of the comparative morphologist. 



1 See his "Tableau des genres de v^getaux fossiles," p. 93, Diction- 

 naire universel d' histoire naturelle, 1849. 



2 L.c. p. 97. 



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