128 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Yet this plant Avas probably nearer to the 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 AsterojpJiyllites and Sphenophyllnrn, 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 wliite 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 Calamites 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. — Porlion of cross section magnified. 
linger, 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, for some real sohd 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. 
