Natural Science News. 



VOL. IT. No. 8. ALBION, N. Y., MAKCH 21, 189G. Weekly, $1.00 a Year 



Natural Science News. 



A Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and Items of interest, to tlie 

 student of any of the various branches of the 

 Natural Sciences solicited from all. 



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The Primeval Flora. 



The above topic formed the sub- 

 ject of a very interesting lecture by 

 President Dawson, of McGill Col- 

 lege, Montreal, at Steinway Hall, 

 New York, on the evening of the 

 23d December, 1868. Notwith- 

 standing the lecture embraced al- 

 together too wide a field for any- 

 thing like thorough treatment, the 

 happy stlye and popular method 

 adopted by the lecturer, made it 

 very acceptable. After the usual 

 introduction of the lecturer to the 

 audience, President Dawson said: 

 An ancient authority has defined 

 geologists as a class of amiable 

 and harmless enthusiasts, who -are 

 happy and grateful if you will only 

 consent to give them an unlimited 

 quantity of that which, to them, 

 has, perhaps, the most value of all 

 things, namely, past time. I con- 

 fess to this definition of geologists, 

 so far as my subject this evening is 

 concerned, for I shall have to 

 make a large demand upon your 

 faith as to the extent of the past 

 time, and shall have to ask you to 

 give me all of it which you reason- 

 ably and conscientiously may. 

 Geology, indeed, works strange 

 revelations in our view of things, 

 new and old. The primitive for- 

 ests, and even the gray rocks and 

 hills themselves are things not 

 primitive and unchanging, not 

 things, comparatively, of yester- 

 day, the successions of olden for- 

 ests and olden rocks that in dim 

 and ghost-like procession recede 

 from our view into the past of an 

 antiquity, compared with which 

 antiquities are things of yesterday. 



The murmuring pines, and hem- 

 lock, bearded with moss and in 

 garments green, indistinct in the 

 twilight, may stand like Druids of 

 old with voices sad and prophetic; 

 but they belong not to the forest 

 primeval of the earth's younger 

 days, [though they may point back- 

 ward to perished predecessors of 

 truly old date, truly primitive and 

 geological antiquity. It is to them 

 that I must try to carry you back 

 in imagination this evening to 

 awaken those slumbering ages and 

 make them green again in your 

 eyes and vocal in your ears. 



Transferring our thoughts to 

 these old forests, and imagining 

 their strange fantastic forms, and 

 the singular creatures that lived 

 beneath their shade, we shall find 

 ourselves in a new world different 

 from that which we inhabit: and 

 differently peopled. Could we 

 marshall in one view four or five 

 planets, each clothed with the pe- 

 culiar flora, and inhabited by the 

 peculiar fauna of a distinct geolog- 

 ical period, we should truly have 

 before us so many distinct worlds 

 with nothing to connect them with 

 each other save only certain simi- 

 larities of plan and conception. 

 But when we view these several 

 worlds as successive, and destined 

 the one to prepare the way for the 

 other, we can perceive relations of 

 the most remarkable and unex- 

 pected character, and have pre- 

 sented to us a long protracted 

 scheme of creation too vast to - be 

 contained on the surface of our 

 planet at any one period, and rep- 

 resenting with our present flora all 

 the possibilities of vegetable exist- 

 ence, and all the uses, present and 

 past, which plants can serve. 



I have selected as the subject of 

 this lecture one small department 

 of the vast field of fossil plants, a 

 department of peculiar interest as 

 relating to the oldest known 

 plants, and which as a special and 

 favorite study of my own I must 

 endeavor to make attractive to 

 you. But I must not rest content- 

 ed with this, but in justice to the 

 subject must try also to present it 

 in an orderly and systematic man- 

 ner. 



I must endeavor to give you 

 something like a connected sketch 

 of that primeval flora which is the 

 subject of this lecture; and in or- 

 der to do this, I must first say a 

 few words on the relations of their 

 primeval flora to .exis'.ing plants; 



2d, I shall say something of their 

 relations to the geologic time; 3d, 

 I shall enter upon the subject 

 proper by describing to you some 

 of the most remarkable plants that 

 flourished in that primeval age; 

 and, 4th, I shall conclude with no- 

 ticing some of the uses of primeval 

 flora to us, the practical use it 

 serves to our present race; and I 

 shall endeavor to give you, if pos- 

 sible, some idea of the light which 

 geology gives us as to the first ap- 

 pearance of plants on our planet, 

 and how far back they can be 

 traced in geologic time. 



First, then, I shall speak for the 

 benefit of those who may not have 

 pursued the study of botany, of 

 the relations of existing planets, 

 and the relation of the • fos-sil flora 

 to them. Taking the whole of the 

 planets known to us, we shall find 

 upon examination that they may 

 be all divided into two great series; 

 first, that series of plants in which 

 we observe distinct flowers, and 

 fruit containing seeds. These 

 constitute the phenogamous plants 

 of the botanist. Then we have a 

 great class of plants of a lower and 

 humbler organization, which are 

 destitute of true flowers, and 

 which instead of producing seeds, 

 produce granules, performing the 

 functions of seeds, called spores. 

 These are the cryptogamous plants 

 of the botanist. The whole vege- 

 table kingdom is divided into these 

 two great classes. Now, taking 

 first the phenogams, we shall find 

 three classes of them. We have 

 first, that group of plants in which 

 all our trees and shrubs and the 

 greater part of our cultivated 

 plants and weeds belong — the ex- 

 ogens, which have a distinct pith, 

 and wood, and bark. 



Then we have a class in which 

 these features are more or less 

 mixed through the entire structure, 

 and in which there is little dis- 

 tinction of wood and bark, and of 

 which the palms of the tropics and 

 the grasses of our own latitude are 

 examples. These are called en- 

 dogens. A third class are gym- 

 nosperms, whichdiave naked seeds, 

 specimens of which are the well 

 known pines and the sago of the 

 tropics. Thus, to recapitulate, we 

 have three groups of the pheno- 

 gams, of which oak or maple, the 

 palm, and the pine tree, are re- 

 spectively representatives. 



In the cryptogams we may also 

 make a three-fold division respect- 



