34 
never trod, or swamps whose awful solitude was, perhaps, 
only broken by the occasional croak of a Batrachian reptile,* 
and whose very flowers were probably never visited by the 
fairy forms of the insect world. To such early pages 
in the archaeology of time must we turn for the period 
when these relics of vegetation were vigorous and green. 
If such is true, the sceptical philosopher will exultingly ex- 
claim, — For what purpose was there such a lavish creation of 
the fairest and most graceful of nature's works spread around, 
when no being existed capable of appreciating their beauties 
and partaking of their produce ? Botany unhesitatingly 
answers the question. Vegetable physiology declares to us 
in the most unequivocal manner, that it was through the 
agency of the countless millions of digestive cells thus pro- 
vided and kept in action, the atmosphere was purified from 
the superabundance of carbonic acid with which it was 
loaded, and rendered fitting first for the respiration of reptile 
life, and lastly for man himself, whose creation closed this 
wondrous work. 
The two genera, Sigillaria and Favularia, were charac- 
terised by furrowed stems, up which were arranged, in 
parallel lines, the scars of numerous leaves or ramenta, but 
without any indication of branches. The genera we have 
* Although I am not aware that any Batrachian remains have yet been found 
in the true coal formation, we have abundant evidence of the existence of 
enormous species in the very next deposit ; the lower new red sandstone of 
Lancashire and Worcestershire, where the foot tracks of Labrinthodon are 
indelibly preserved ; and Sir C. Lyell mentions the discovery, by Dr. King, 
in 1844, of reptile foot marks, probably of the same kind, upon sandstones in 
Pennsylvania, considered equivalent to part of the Paleozoic coal measures of 
the British islands; indeed the Greensburg sandstone occurs in the very midst 
of the Appalachian coal field, the main Pitsburg seam of coal being worked 
100 feet above it. That Saurian reptiles existed at this period is satisfactorily 
proved by Von Dechen's discovery in the Saarbruck paleozoic coal district in 
1848, of the skull and remains of three species of crocodilian lizard (Archi- 
gosaurus Decheni, medius, and minus) in nodules of ironstone — See Meyer 
on the Reptiles of the Coal Formation, — Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 
IV., part II, page 51. 
