GEOLOGICAL ANTIQUITY OF FLOWERS AND INSECTS. 
37 
and it is in lacustrine and estuarine deposits that we find vege- 
tation most perfectly and abundantly fossilized. On the other 
hand, every geological formation abounds more or less in 
animal remains ; chiefly those of marine species which lived 
in the seas along whose floors the rocks were originally laid 
down in the sedimentary state. In estuarine and lacustrine 
strata we meet with the largest number of remains of land 
animals. Their carcases have been brought down by streams 
and rivers. The proportion of land animals thus preserved, 
both vertebrates and such invertebrate forms as insects, bears 
a certain proportion to the number of actual terrestrial plants 
which have also been fossilized. 
If therefore the geological record is imperfect as regards 
fossil animals, most of which were marine, it must necessarily 
be so as regards plants. As to their bearing on the doctrine of 
evolution, less than ten years ago some of our best naturalists held 
that fossil animal remains were neutral. So little dependence 
could be placed on any inference drawn from their geological dis- 
tribution, owing to the possibility of their unexpectedly being 
found in other strata than those to which it was supposed they 
had been limited, that philosophical naturalists preferred to 
regard palaeontological evidence for the time as nil. But year 
after year has witnessed the discovery of new animal forms in 
strata of various ages, and in different parts of the world ; and now 
the most stubborn opponent of evolution is obliged to acknow- 
ledge that the balance of evidence from fossil remains is 
becoming every day larger in favour of the new philosophy. 
Much the same may be said of fossil botany. Thanks to the 
value of mineralized vegetation when it assumes the shape of 
coal, the formations bearing it have been better studied and 
explored than any other, so that the chances of finding new 
vegetable forms have been greatly increased. We have 
sometimes to skip formation after formation before we can 
accept any inference drawn from the occurrence of fossil 
land plants, and we are often surprised by the contrasts be- 
tween floras thus separated by extensive epochs. Thus, after 
the abundant flora of the Coal Measures, we meet with but little 
until we come to the Upper Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene 
formations. Here and there in the Lias, some parts of the 
Oolite, and the Lower Cretaceous rocks, we come upon local 
floras, some of which, as in the case of the Upper Cretaceous 
floras, had an extensive geographical distribution, so that any 
inferences drawn from their occurrence are much safer than 
if we had met with a fossil flora in one locality only. Whereas 
in the animal remains of the successive formations we can 
witness group after group of marine organisms making their 
appearance and becoming extinct, the story of the vegetable 
