FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 
BY DR. A. KELLOGG. 
THE great coal measures of our continent are the grand 
storehouses of preserved plants from this richest realm of 
the vegetable kingdom ; they are the entombed pioneers that 
have paved the way, and still light the path of higher forms 
of life, both vegetable and animal. However much we may 
to-day value these humble and lower steps on the stage of 
existence, we are apt to fall far below a due appreciation of 
their value in the economy of nature ; our health, wealth, com- 
fort, nay our very existence more or less, directly depends 
on the uses they subserve ; and still every new dawn brings 
some novel use crowding the advancing ages until we look 
back but a few days to our early years, and wonder how we, 
as well as our forefathers could do without this or that neces- 
sary of life. As coal they are the familiar friends of our la- 
bors, and the cheerful companions of the domestic fireside. 
It is not, however, to the dead and fossilized forms alone, but 
mainly to the living, that we invite a moment's attention. 
An idea of minuteness and insignificance too often follows 
any reference to the simplest plants in nature; yet many at- 
tain a great size, such as Tree Ferns and certain Sea-weeds 
—the former forty feet high, of the size of one's body, 
and the latter of prodigious length, besides myriads of inter- 
mediate forms. 
e Fungi, a brief account of which follows, are cellular 
plants, without flowers, living in the air, often nourished 
through a stem by an amorphous spawn, or mycelium, in- 
stead of a root, and propagated by very minute spores, 
serving the same purpose as the seeds of flowering plants. 
The largest species found in California, is the kind com- 
monly known as Touchwood, or Hard Tinder ( Polyporus) ; 
of a semicircular shape, between one and two feet across, 
` AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV. 43 (837) ` 
