334 



PALAEOZOIC TIME CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 



Lycopodia are four to five feet in height : the ancient were sixty to 

 eighty feet. The Equiseta of our marshes are slender, herbaceous 

 plants, with hollow stems, and, when of large size, little over two 

 feet high ; the Calamites of the Carboniferous marshes had partly 

 woody trunks, and some were a score of feet, or more, in height. 



The Conifers of the period were abundant, and were the modern 

 feature in the Palaeozoic forests. But these were, in the main 

 related to the Araucarian Pines (see p. 166),- — a group which now 

 lives in Araucania, Chili, and Brazil, on the continent of South 

 America, and in Australia and Norfolk Island, in the South Pacific, 

 and which are therefore confined in the Age of Man to the Southern 

 hemisphere. 



1. Lepidodendron tribe (Lycopodium or Ground-Pine family). The 

 various genera [Lepidodendron, Lepidophloios, Halonia, Knorria, etc.) 

 are confined to the Lower Coal measures. They were lofty woody 

 trees, with scarred trunks and branches, the scars of which (figs. 

 5G3, 4, 5, 7) are arranged in quincunx order. These scars are the 

 impressions left where the leaves or fronds dropped off, and are 

 very similar to those observed on the trunks of modern tree- 

 ferns, one of which is shown in fig. 575, and an ancient one in 

 fig. 566. 



Figs. 564-566. 

 65 



Fig. 564, Lepidodendron obovatum; 565, Lepidodendron clypeatum ; 566, Caulopteris punc- 

 tata ( X \i\ being one of the scars left on the stem of a tree-fern by the leaf-stalk. 



Fig. 563, view — partly ideal — of the extremity of a branch of a Lepidodendron. 

 The slender, pine-like leaves in the Lepidodendron Sternbergii, as shown in mag- 

 nificent specimens from the coal-mines of Radnitz, in Austria, figured by 



