Chap. XII.] 
LOWER CARBONIFEROUS. 
287 
view of ancient nature hitherto published*, Professor Goppert estimates 
the total number of known species of fossil plants of this great Carbo- 
niferous era as 934, which are thus distributed : — 
Plantje 879 : — Cellulares, including the Fungi, Algae, &c, 13; Vascu- 
lares, 866; of which 772 are Cryptogamous Plants, or Ferns, Calamites, 
Asterophyllites ; and 94 are Phanerogamous Plants, such as Cycads, 
Conifers, &c. 
The result arrived at by this botanist agrees generally with that of his 
precursor in this line of inquiry, M. Adolphe Brongniart, who first gave to 
the world a general and philosophical view of the distribution of former 
vegetation. On his part Prof. Goppert has not only added considerably 
to the number of species, but also to the number of .coniferous or forest 
trees f. 
Both, however, of these eminent men, as well as many other botanists, 
are agreed in the opinion that, as the great mass of the Plants belong to 
the vascular cryptogamic class, the conditions of climate under which such 
vegetables grew in very various latitudes constituted a phenomenon espe- 
cially characteristic of the Carboniferous period. These Plants are, in 
fact, as characteristic of the Carboniferous period as the Trilobites and 
Graptolites are of the Silurian era. "Whilst the earlier system is almost 
exclusively marked by its marine contents, the Carboniferous deposits owe 
their chief features to the actual presence or the contiguity of lands 
covered with a peculiar vegetation, which, disappearing with the youngest 
Palaeozoic strata, now called Permian, was never afterwards reproduced 
upon the earth ; for no one of the floras of subsequent geological periods 
possessed those characteristic features of rank gigantic Cryptogamia, indi- 
cative of a peculiar, warm, moist climate, which so prominently marked 
the vegetation of the earliest great woody epoch. 
In most of their stony characters the successive strata of the Carboni- 
ferous rocks do not differ essentially from many which had preceded them. 
Like the Silurian and Devonian, they contain beds of pebbles or conglo- 
merate, sandstone, shale, and limestone, though they seldom exhibit a true 
slaty cleavage But, when examined more in detail, they are found to 
vary considerably in their nature and contents in different parts of the 
world. In subsequent Chapters a few allusions will be made to these 
variations in other countries ; but for the present we will take a cursory 
view of some of their features only in Britain. 
Lower Carboniferotis Rocks of Great Britain. — In the region represented in 
* Bronn's G-eschichte der Natur, vol. iii. part 2. J In parts of France the Carboniferous rocks 
The so-called ' Transition ' plants of Goppert are are very crystalline and slaty, as I have shown in 
included in this list, because it has been ascer- a memoir on the environs of Vichy: Quart. Journ. 
tained that nearly all of them occur in strata G-eol. Soc. vol. vii. p. 14. In some of these much 
which, formerly viewed as ancient ' grauwackeY dislocated, schistose, and greywacke-like rocks of 
are now known to be of no higher antiquity than the Sichon, I obtained specimens of Carbonife- 
the lower division of the Carboniferous rocks. rous species of Chonetes, Phillipsia, Orthis, Pro- 
| Geinitz, Dawson, and others have added still ductus, &c.,in 1850. In the South of Ireland, also, 
further to the known species of Palaeozoic vege- the Lower Carboniferous strata are slaty, 
tation. 
