The Fossil Plants. 
177 
outlines and minutest serratures of the leaves are 
clearly traced. The very nerves, with their charac- 
teristic bifurcations, are accurately depicted on this 
wonderful lithograph. Petioles, buds, and woody 
stems, cones and fruits, slender grass-leaves, striated 
rushes, the fluted stems of gigantic club-mosses, 
the scarred and pitted trunks of extinct tree-ferns, 
diversify by turns the crayon sketchings of the dusky 
ceilings. Prostrate, all! They have stood erect ; the 
soil has held them by their spreading roots, the genial 
sunlight has warmed them, the vital breeze has fanned 
their verdant foliage; change, which transforms all 
things, has swept over them, and graceful fern and 
giant club-moss, slender reed and arrogant conifer, 
have lain down together on their couch of sediment, 
and the old sexton, Time, has piled upon them the 
accumulated ashes of a hundred succeeding generations 
of trees, and herbs, and perished populations.” 
In a work issued as this chapter goes to press 1 
many of the fossil plants referred to here are grouped 
under the general heading Equisetales. These are 
then divided into Recent and Fossil Equisetales , the 
latter being thus grouped — 
f I. Equisetites. 
\ II. Phylloth eca. 
FOSSIL EQUISETALES ITT. Schizoneura. 
/TV. Calamites. 
V V. Arcileocalamites. 
1“ Fossil Plants.” A. 0. Seward. Cambridge University Press. 
Note.— Schizoneura, OlenndvidUnn , and Ottelia do not belong to the family 
Conifera'. Through imperfect spacing on page 175, they appear to be classed under 
that head. 
TT 
