CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 



328 



terrestrial Cryptogams of North America, in order to make a forest of 

 them, the forest would hardly overtop a man's head ; and the Ferns 

 would have an undergrowth of Toad-stools, Mosses, and Lichens. 



Tree-ferns, one of which stands near the middle of the sketch on 

 page 322, now grow only in the warmer zones of the globe. The 

 largest modern Lycopods are four to five feet in height ; the ancient, 

 the features of which are shown near the sides of the sketch, were 

 sixty to eighty feet. The Equiseta of our North American marshes 

 are slender, herbaceous plants, with hollow stems, and, when of large 

 size, hardly three feet high; the Calamites of the Carboniferous 

 marshes had partly woody trunks, and some were a score of feet, or 

 more, in height. The damp forests of Caraccas afford the largest of 

 the modern Equiseta ; and these are thirty feet in height, but, unlike 

 the Calamites, they are quite slender. 



The Conifers of the period w r ere abundant, and were the modern 

 feature in the Paleozoic forests. But these, like the Devonian, were 



Fig. 618. 



Extremity of a branch of Lepidodendron , with the leaves attached. 



in the main related to the Araucarian Pines (see p. 134), — a group 

 which now lives in Araucania, Chili, and Brazil, on the continent of 



