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special marvels peculiar to themselves. In the first place r 

 the antiquity of the fern tribe is enormously greater than 

 that of flowering plants. We may go back to the earliest 

 coal ages, a period antedating the deposit of thousands 

 upon thousands of feet of subsequent formations of all' 

 descriptions, and in those coal seams and the shale on 

 which they were developed as primaeval forests of ferns 

 and their allies, we shall find fronds as large or larger than 

 those of to-day, and, what is more striking still, we shall 

 find them as finely cut and as completely planned as our 

 ferns of the present day, and with their reproductive spores 

 arranged on similar lines. This means that even then 

 they had been evolved into full fern perfection, and were 

 not, as we might reasonably expect, ruder and rougher 

 types in process of shaping. 



Reading the history of the evolution of organic life in 

 the light of present science, and of the varying phases of 

 existence on the earth's surface during the cooling and 

 solidifying process, we are led to the conclusion that 

 vegetation made its first appearance in an aquatic form, 

 peopling, presumably, warm ocean waters, first as roving; 

 organisms, and then in the shape of seaweed or algae. 

 These, as the earth's crust assumed greater and greater 

 stability, would gradually invade the coasts, and with that 

 adaptability which is imparted by inherent variation, 

 would eventually find a footing inland as low forms of 

 land plants, lichens, and their like, merging into mosses in 

 one direction and fungi in another. AH these types of 

 vegetable life are, it will be noted, reproduced in one and 

 the same manner, viz. not by seeds the product of fertilized 

 flowers, for they bear no flowers proper, but by spores, 

 minute bodies thrown off in enormous profusion, and so 

 light as to be easily carried hither and thither by air or 

 water. The result of this profusion and easy transference, 

 coupled with the inherent power of variation aforesaid, which 



