102 
FOSSIL FEENS. 
All the observations hitherto made, have been on the Ferns 
found in our own district on the crust of the earth’s surface. 
It will now be attempted to penetrate the recesses of the 
earth, and learn how plants, which once grew above ground, 
have been discovered, not green and fresh, but turned into 
stone, or as is commonly denominated, fossilized. Not only 
have shells and bones, and such hard substances been pre- 
served, which existed some thousand years ago, but also 
vegetable productions, and especially Ferns. In Lyme and 
Charmouth, and the railway cuttings of the Exeter Exten- 
sion Line, (all within our own neighbourhood) many animal 
remains have been found. In other parts of England very 
many fossil plants are met with of altogether a different 
species from those which now grow among us. In one of 
the editions of Withering’s Botany, it is stated that the 
Eoyal Flowering Fern is the only species of an indigenous 
vegetable ever discovered in a fossil state.” This is not 
true. The Fern to which, probably. Withering alluded is 
Neuropteris Gigantea, once called Osmunda Gigantea, a 
plant of much more gigantic dimensions, and differing in 
many respects from our Osmunda Eegalis. 
Fossilized Ferns are found in various strata, in the Oolite, 
the New Eed Sandstone, and the Slate, but in none do they 
so much abound as in the Coal. The Coal is made up of 
plants. None can stand near a coal mine and watch the 
blue shale brought up without finding it full of vegetable 
productions. The coal itself bears witness to the quantity 
of plants within it. Myriads of plants are found in the 
coal, above the coal, and under the coal.”* Of these veget- 
able remains in the coal flora one half are Ferns. There 
are throughout the world two thousand species of living 
Ferns. In the British Isles there are between forty and 
* Lecture on coal by J. W. Salter. 
