110 
that such a noble tree has dwindled into the more humble 
Ferns that grow among us, and therefore we must presume 
that it is extinct, at all events, in this portion of the globe. 
If ever our country should be a perfect swamp again, and 
our richly cultivated meadows be converted into a thick im- 
pervious wood, and our fruitful fields become a wilderness, 
then may these gigantic plants rear their heads once more, 
and their curious trunks full of deep scars from their fallen 
fronds appear. 
It is wonderful when we learn how these subterranean 
plants have been so well preserved. ‘‘Some Ferns, nay 
many of them, remind us of the Tree Ferns familiar to our 
hot houses. Others resemble the humble fern*fronds of our 
lanes and hedge-rows. But all are perfect. It is rare to 
find a disturbed or crumpled leaf, though of course they are 
often only fragments, such as our brooks and rivers float 
down.”* This is the more surprising, because those who 
wish to preserve specimens of Fern in a herbarium, have 
great difficulty in laying out the leaflets without their being 
sadly disarranged. Here again we may fairly infer that the 
water spread the foliage so nicely, and then it sank into the 
mud, where it hardened, and, after lengthened ages, now 
exhibits its fronds in such perfection. Though the rich 
glossy green is gone, the brightly polished black coal still tells 
a tale of its once elegant drooping frond, its neatly divided 
leaflets, its clear transparent veins, and buds bent-in like a 
bishop’s crosier or a shepherd’s crook. 
It may strike some as deserving notice, that there were 
nearly three times the number of Ferns growing on British 
ground in those olden days. It is not easy to determine 
whether there were not many more than those we have at 
present in the time when Cjesar invaded Britain, and good 
king Alfred established such salutary institutions. There 
were no books of Ferns then, no amateurs searching our 
woods and walls to discover some new plant or^ variety, to 
find out the exact number, though the necromancers may 
have used the Fern-seed to make themselves invisible. If 
there were a greater number existing at that time, much 
more may we presume that in remoter days still these plants 
existed in yet greater abundance. One thing is certain, 
* Salter’s Lectures ou Coal. 
