24 Fossil Botany. 



grow in our climate only from two to four feet in height, nor 

 have we any individual of this tribe in this country which 

 attains more than twice that stature. But in hot countries, as 

 in Tropical America and in the East Indies, the Arborescent or 

 Tree Ferns, though belonging to the same family as our own, 

 attain the altitude of forest trees, with stems of eight or ten 

 inches in diameter. On the stairs of the British Museum at 

 London, there is an Arborescent Fern which recently came 

 from Bengal, measuring forty-five feet in height. In the ardent 

 climate of South America, Baron Humboldt, to his astonish- 

 ment, saw immense groves of a similar colossal growth, and 

 it may well be supposed that nothing in the vegetable world 

 can present to the eye of the traveller a more beautiful, inter- 

 esting and imposing scene. 



In the fossil state, in cold climates, similar ferns, as has 

 been mentioned, are found at the present day. They are 

 abundant in the coal mines of England, France, and Germany ; 

 and in this country near the Canada line, as well as in Siberia, 

 similar phenomena occur. Now it might be supposed, refer- 

 ring to the general deluge for an explanation, that transporta- 

 tion of these plants by water, from their native country to the 

 place where they are found, would readily account for these 

 facts ; but the plausibility of this theory is at once swept away 

 by another fact, which is this. These ferns are sometimes 

 found standing in the identical spots where they grew, their 

 roots still inserted into the earth, as in their life-time, but 

 equally with their stems and leaves, petrified into stone. The 

 only consistent solution of the difficulty, appears to be in the 

 theory, that Ue temperature of the earth was once much 

 higher than it now is, and that the climate of the regions in 

 which these fossil remains are now discovered, was of the 

 same nature with that in which their analogical recent brethren 

 are now produced, — a theory, the truth of which, at present 

 we shall neither affirm nor deny, and for a discussion of which 

 this is not the place. Although allusion has been made in the 

 foregoing remarks to the Ferns only, yet there are several 

 other families of plants to which the same circumstances are 

 equally applicable. Among these are the Equisetums, a tribe 

 well known as recent plants, one of which, a little straight 



