THE FLORA OF THE EARLY MESOZOIC. 



189 



in Virginia, these are merely precursors of those of the 

 Upper Cretaceous, and are not sufficient to redeem the 

 earlier Cretaceous from being a period of pines and cycads. 



On the whole, this early Mesozoic flora, so far as 

 known to us, has a monotonous and mean appearance. 

 It no doubt formed vast forests of tall pines, perhaps re- 

 sembling the giant Sequoias of California ; but they must 

 for the most part have been dark and dismal woods, 

 probably tenanted by few forms of life, for the great rep- 

 tiles of this age must have preferred the open and sunny 

 coasts, and many of them dwelt in the waters. Still we 

 must not be too sure of this. The berries and nuts of the 

 numerous yews and cycads were capable of affording 

 much food. We know that in this age there were many 

 great herbivorous reptiles, like Iguanodon and Hadrosau- 

 rus, some of them fitted by their structure to feed upon 

 the leaves and fruits of trees. There were also several 

 kinds of small herbivorous mammals, and much insect 

 life, and it is likely that few of the inhabitants of the 

 Mesozoic woods have been preserved as fossils. We may 

 yet have much to learn of the inhabitants of these forests 

 of ferns, cycads, and pines. We must not forget in this 

 connection that in the present day there are large islands, 

 like New Zealand, destitute of mammalia, and having a 

 flora comparable with that of the Mesozoic in the northern 

 hemisphere, though more varied. We have also the re- 

 markable example of Australia, with a much richer flora 

 than that of the early Mesozoic, yet inhabited only by 

 non-placental mammals, like those of the Mesozoic. 



The principal legacy that the Mesozoic woods have 

 handed down to our time is in some beds of coal, locally 

 important, but of far less extent than those of the Car- 

 boniferous period. Still, in America, the Eichmond coal- 

 field in Virginia is of this age, and so are the anthracite 

 beds of the Queen Charlotte Islands, on the west coast of 

 Canada, and the coal of Brora in Sutherlandshire. Valu- 

 18 



