168 
Geology of Sydney. 
for us the story. The Lycopods are but small 
plants, and quite insignificant in comparison with 
what Lycopods have been in former periods of the 
eartlTs history. They were all trees at that time 
• — trees with stems 20 to 45 feet high — and very 
ornamental trees, if we may judge by what is left 
to us of their trunks and leaves. In those days 
flowers, properly speaking, had not come into exist- 
ence ; at least, if they existed they have left no traces 
of their presence. So, most of the bright pageantry of 
our floral kingdom did not adorn the forests, but in 
its place were elegant forms, and it may be, for all 
we know, varieties of colour too. Instead of the 
rough bark and gnarled, twisted boles of the forest, 
there were graceful, tapering stems, covered with 
lozenge-shaped patterns below, and with long, graceful, 
scale-like leaves above. They were simple forms of 
vegetable life, according to the way we speak now, 
though in one sense their ultimate organisation was 
as intricate as any in the present time. There were 
not so many special organs, and there was certainly 
not anything like the variety of the vegetable 
kingdom of to-day. From the wide distribution of a 
few species all over the world, we see that plant life 
was then simple and uniform. It served its purposes, 
whatever these were, lived its life, and then left us a 
valuable legacy in the shape of coal. 
For the convenience of students anxious to bear 
in mind the classification of fossil plants, I insert a few 
