1885. ] Evolution in the Vegetable Kingdom. 749 
living representatives. This is less marked in the ferns than in 
those forms which have as their nearest modern descendants the 
Equisetacez, the Lycopodiacee and the Conifere. The Palzo- 
zoic ancestors of the Equisetaceze are the Calamariz, having the 
genus Calamites for their typical form. Those of the Lycopo- 
diaceze are the Lepidophytes with Lepidodendron as their type; 
while according to the most recent researches the Conifere had 
as their ancestral form the Cordaitez, long classed among the 
Cycadacez, with Cordaites as the principal genus. 
As a means of expressing the fact of this prolongation of living 
forms through the geologic periods ahd of denoting the probable 
descent of modern from these archaic types of vegetation, the 
terms Filicineze, Equisetinee and Lycopodinee have been em- 
ployed as broader than the corresponding ordinal designations in 
common use. The Marquis Saporta has sought to accomplish 
the same object for the Coniferze by the term Aciculariz, but this 
unfamiliar substitute will not be likely to meet with general 
acceptance. 
The cellular cryptogams, which, admitting Oldhamia to be a 
plant, had two representatives in the Cambrian, constituted the 
principal vegetation throughout the Silurian. Yet the ferns, if 
we accept Saporta’s Eopteris, the Equisetineze and Lycopodinee, 
all had their origin in the Lower Silurian, while the Conifere, 
through Cordaites, made their appearance in the Upper Silurian. 
Three species of Rhizocarpez (Sporangites, Protosalvinia) have 
been described by Sir J. W. Dawson from spore-cases detected in 
Devonian rocks of both Canada and Brazil. Heer had already* 
mentioned, in 1874, what he regarded as the fruit of some rhizo- 
carp from the Lower Carboniferous of Spitzbergen, and there can 
be little doubt that many of the spore-bearing plants of the coal 
measures belonged to this order, although none have been de- 
scribed from the Carboniferous proper. This little group, which 
has been supposed in a manner to mark the transition from the 
cryptogams to the gymnosperms, reappears, according to Heer, 
in the Odlite of Siberia, the Urgonian of Kome and the Ceno- 
-manian of Atane, Greenland. It occurs in our Laramie and 
Green River groups, in the Oligocene of France, and in the Mio- 
cene of Switzerland and Central Europe. 
With the true Carboniferous two new types appear—the Cyca- 
daceæ and the monocotyledons. If, with Grand’Eury, we rele- 
