THE GEOLOGIST. 



Yet this plant was probablynearertothe great trees above-mentioned 

 than anything else we can mention. The stem (or rather pith, for 

 we do not see the stem itself in one case out of a hundred, but only 

 the cast of the pith) is ribbed, and jointed just like Equisetum stems, 

 but very rarely shows any leaves. Its leaves and branches were pro- 

 bably the plants called Asterophyllites and Sphenojphyllwn, and 

 they look much like the " goose-grass" with which as schoolboys 

 we used to bleed our tongues in sport. These two are very 

 common. Some have broader leaves than others, and an Ame- 

 rican author of repute (Dr. Shumard, I believe) has seen reason 

 to think that they were aquatic plants — that the broad leaves 

 were the floating leaves, and the narrow ones the leaves that grew 

 beneath the water. The common white buttercup which looks so 

 gay in spring time on the ponds will serve to illustrate this supposition. 

 Others do not think it quite a true one. To show how near some of 

 these Galamites approach to the structure of ferns, I give here two cross 

 sections, one of a tree fern, taken from Brongniart's work (Fig. 11), 

 the other of the plant of a Calamite family (Fig. 12), figured by Dr. 



Fig. 13.— Portion of cross section magnified. 



Unger, in a work on the fossil plants of Saxony. Fig 3 shows a 

 portion of one of these cross sections magnified, the bundle of vessels 

 among the cellular tissue. 



Now then, tor some real solid wooded trees— and with these we 

 must finish — for the coal-flora after all was a scanty one compared 

 with living nature. The individuals were abundant enough, but they 

 were of comparatively few families of plants. 



