THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS 613 
In the background, at the left, are the unbranched 
Sigillarias, and the branched Lepidodendrons. The Cor- 
daitales, which formed the Devonian forests, were not yet 
extinct, but none is shown in the figure. Other forms, 
ancestors of our modern conifers and angiosperms, must 
be imagined as hidden in the recesses of the forest. 
526. Significance of the Fossil Record. Before the 
brilliant discoveries in fossil botany, just outlined, were 
made, there had been (as stated in Chapter XXXVI) a 
general tendency among botanists to consider the compar- 
atively simple moss-plants as an older type than the fern, 
and that either they or their close relatives were the ances-' 
tors of Pteridophytes. As outlined in the same chapter, 
the sporogonium of the moss was regarded as representing 
the form from which, by elaboration of vegetative tissues 
and organs, the sporophyte of the fern was derived. This 
view was clearly expressed in 1884 by the noted botanist 
Nageli, who considered that the sporophyte of Pterido- 
phytes was derived from a moss-like sporogonium by the 
development of leafy branches. 
FIG. 432. Restoration of a scene along a sluggish creek in Texas and 
New Mexico during the late Carboniferous (Upper Pennsylvania) and 
early Permian times. The lowlands of this period doubtless swarmed 
with reptiles such as shown in the picture, and with other animals, now 
extinct. Some specimens of the giant " dragon-flies " had a spread of 
wings of two feet. The fern-like trees and the bushy plants in the fore- 
ground are Cycadofilicales. To the right of the water are wide stretches 
of the huge scouring rush (Calamites}; on the left bank of the stream are 
the unbranched Sigillarias (still as prominent as earlier in the coal 
period), and on higher ground to the left the branched Lepidodendrons. 
One must view this scene as one of many such landscapes, with ever- 
varying detail, along streams and inlets. Cordaites, which in later 
Devonian time made the first great forests of which there is record, is 
still present, though not shown. So, too, there are hidden in the recesses 
of the forest the forerunners of the modern coniferous types, as well as 
other forms destined to give rise to the angiosperms. (Landscape from 
Williston, adapted from Neumayr.) 
