Dr Martius on Antediliwian Plants. '5'B 
It is scarcely necessary for me to remark, that, in eliciting 
these characters, I have had more in view the distinction of the 
<lifFerent species of petrified trees, than the application to each 
part of the name which would answer in the living specimen. 
For the areolae, such as 1 here name them, are not solely formed 
of the cicatrices of the fallen fronds, but partly also of the bark, 
which, under the immense pressure which these trees have un- 
dergone, being of a softer texture than the cicatrices themselves, 
has been corrugated to their shape. The interstices, therefore, 
as named above, are only a part of the bark raised into a fold 
or wrinkle, which differs according to the form of the cicatrix, 
but the rows of warts in the areolm accurately point out the 
place of insertion of the fronds. It hence appears, that the base 
of the frond in most of the species here enumerated has scarcely 
been an inch in diameter, and that the fronds themselves have 
been much smaller, although more numerous, than we observe 
in the living species. 
As very numerous examples of these arborescent, as well as 
of herbaceous, ferns, occur in the older Coal Formation, it can 
scarcely be doubted, that this order of plants has been different 
with regard to its numerical relation to the other families of ve- 
getables, in those remote times in which the Earth buried its 
vegetation under chaotic ruins, from what it is at the present 
day. For although we can say nothing with certainty as to the 
number of species which may have existed of the different ge- 
nera of ferns, we are yet authorised, by many circumstances, to 
infer, that the dense forests of the primitive world, afterwards 
destroyed by various catastrophes and reduced to charcoal, have 
been very abundantly stocked with ferns. Nor is the hypothesis 
founded upon less powerful and plausible arguments, which 
ranks the genera of this order of plants as among the first sta- 
mina of vegetation expanded over the surface of the globe, either 
when newly formed, or when renovated after the destruction of 
a previously existing state. That ferns are the basis of other 
vegetation, and prepare the soil for the growth of other tribes 
springing up upon their remains, has already been well observed 
by Linnaeus. For as their vegetation is especially directed to 
the formation pf very large fronds, which, from the system of 
fructification being, as it were, depauperated and depressed by 
the evolution of foliaceous parts, exercise all the vigour of life 
