FOSSILS OF OLD RED SANDSTONE 



231 



earlier formations. This is, in reality, a point of no im- 

 portance for the development theory. The question 

 is, with what kind of plants did land vegetation begin 1 

 The anxiety of the reviewer to force a verdict in his favor 

 is here strongly shown. " What," he says, " are these 

 first fruits of nature's vegetable germs ? Are they rude, 

 ill-fashioned forms ? Far otherwise. We find among 

 them palms and tree-ferns, &c." In this passage, which 

 substantially conveys the same information as my book, 

 there is an evident design of inducing the belief that 

 the first land vegetation was of a high character. The 

 rigid truth is, that though this was a " grand" in the 

 sense of a luxuriant vegetation, it was composed, as far 

 as positive evidence goes, almost wholly of plants which 

 stand low in the scale of organization. The ascertained 

 dicotyledons (plants having double-lobed seeds and an 

 exterior growth) are extremely rare. On this point, I 

 cannot do better than quote the laborious young Profes- 

 sor of King's College — "The plants which have hitherto 

 been described [in the carboniferous formation] belong 

 either to the acotyledonous class, as the ferns, or to the 

 monocotyledons, and, on the whole, they constitute the 

 simplest forms of vegetation ; but there have also been 

 met with among coal plants unquestionable evidences of 

 dicotyledonous structure, and a genus has been formed 

 under the name of Pinites, tc include a number of speci- 

 mens of fossil wood, &c."* To the undoubted evidence 

 of Mr. Ansted may be added that of his more eminent 

 contemporary, Mr. Lyell, whose sense of the botanical 

 character of this age is such that he emphatically calls it 

 the Age of Ferns.-\ It is evident, then, taking the land- 

 scape of this era as the first, that it is of a nature to har- 

 monize with the development theory, for its chief forms 

 are humble, and only a few are of higher grade, most of 

 these, too, being of an intermediate character between 

 the low and the high. I am reminded, however, in 

 other quarters of certain experiments of Dr. Lindley, 

 showing that the plants chiefly found in the coal are of 

 the kinds which best resist decomposition in water; 

 whence it is inferred that many trees of a high class may 

 nave existed at that time, but perished in the sea, while 

 ireaker vegetation survived. This evidence would be 



* Ansted's Geology, 1844. 

 f Travels in North America, ii., 52 



