726 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. VII. 



bark was carbonized, and the woody stem was in some 

 parts in the state of sandstone, and in others silicified. 

 The remains of Cycadeous plants have likewise been 

 detected in the coal.* 



40. Flora of the Coal. — A more extended notice of 

 the fossil plants of the carboniferous system is not within 

 the scope of these Lectures, and we will now take a brief 

 review of the principal facts that have been submitted to 

 our notice. We have seen that the most remarkable cha- 

 racter of the flora of that remote epoch, is the immense 

 numerical ascendance of the vascular, or higher tribes of 

 cryptogamic plants, which amount to two-thirds of the 

 whole of the species hitherto determined. With these are 

 associated a few palms, coniferae, and cycadeaa, and dicotyle- 

 donous plants approaching to the cacteae, and euphorbiaceas. 

 The vast preponderance and magnitude of the vegetables 

 bearing an analogy to the tribes of ductulosce, but differing 

 from existing species and genera, constitute, therefore, the 

 most important botanical feature. Thus we have plants 

 related to the Equisetum (Calamites), eighteen inches in 

 circumference, and from thirty to forty feet high ; tree-ferns 

 (Sigillarice) fifty feet in height ; and arborescent club- 

 mosses (Lepidodendra) attaining an altitude of sixty or 

 seventy feet. The contrast which such a flora presents to 

 that afforded by the woods and forests of dicotyledonous 

 trees, and the verdant turf, which now grow on the surface 

 of the carboniferous districts of England, is as striking as 

 the discrepancy between the zoology of the palaeozoic for- 

 mations, and that of the present day. This restoration of 



* The fossil plants, named by M. Brongniart Ndggerathia, are 

 referred to the family of the Cycadeee by this eminent observer, from 

 there having been found associated with these stems, leaves with nerva- 

 tion like certain living American Zamice, and others of a special form 

 resembling those which bear the fruit in Cycas revolutaj and also 

 grains or fruits strikingly analogous to those o\' the Cycas. 



