§ 50. RETROSPECT. 747 



In the newest strata are imbedded the remains of trees and 

 plants of species still living in the countries where these de- 

 posits occur. The fossil foxes and turtles of (Eningen (p. 263) 

 lie buried amidst the foliage of poplars, willows, maples, 

 linden-trees, and elms ;* and the brown coal of the Rhine 

 is composed of similar trees. In the beds in actual pro- 

 gress, the most delicate vegetable remains are preserved ; 

 thus, in the lacustrine marls of Scotland, the leaves and 

 seed-vessels of the Charge are found in a state of fossiliza- 

 tion, scarcely distinguishable from the gyrogonites of the 

 tertiary strata of the Paris basin. 



From this review of the botanical epochs which the pre- 

 sent state of geological knowledge enables us to establish, 

 we perceive that, from the most ancient formation in which 

 traces of vegetation remain, the sea has supported the usual 

 forms of marine plants ; and that on the land, ferns and 

 other cryptogarma, palms, and coniferoe, have existed 

 through periods of indefinite duration to the present time ; 

 the most striking and important difference in the ancient 

 and modern floras being the numerical preponderance of 

 the cryptogamia in the former, and of the dicotyledonous 

 tribes in the latter ; and the more extensive geographical 

 range of the same species of plants during the carboniferous 

 era. The theory of the progressive development of creation 

 receives no support from the state of vegetation in the early 

 geological epochs ; fungi, lichens, hepaticse, and mosses, do 

 not occur in the coal ; but coniferae, and the most perfectly 

 organized of the cryptogamic class. 



The absence of all vegetable forms, except a few species of 

 fucoids, in the most ancient fossiliferous rocks, must not, how- 

 ever, be regarded as a proof that the floras of those remote 

 epochs were thus sterile; the only legitimate inference, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, is, that the circumstances 



* See an interesting account of the fossil plants of (Eningen, by 

 Professor Braun, of Carlsruhe ; Dr. Buckland's Essay, p. 510. 



