430 
THE AGE OE NEW ZEALAND. 
found in the green sand of the Isle of Wight, but also in 
similar clusters, and any one who has seen it in its natural 
habitat, the mangrove swamp, will readily identify it with its 
fossil ancestor. 
Many others might be mentioned, but these are sufficient 
to show that organisms belonging to remote ages, which 
have long been extinct in one hemisphere, still exist in the 
other, and that those grand convulsions which caused their 
destruction in one part of the globe did not reach the other, 
or if they did, in such a modified way as not entirely to 
destroy the characteristic forms of that period. If such be the 
correct inference, it will be corroborated by the flora and sylva 
of those countries which have escaped such destructions ; 
they will present a general resemblance to the vegetation 
of the earth peculiar to the period which preceded such 
geological changes, and this likewise will be found to be the 
case. Many of the singular forms of vegetable life belonging 
to the carboniferous age of Britain, but no longer clothing 
its surface, still survive in those southern lands. 
The eartffis earliest garment was most probably that of 
cryptogamous, or cellular plants : the fern, the moss, and 
the lichen preceded the nobler forms of vegetable life ; this, 
then, may be justly termed the fern age of New Zealand, 
since nearly nine-tenths of its surface, particularly of the 
northern island is, or rather was thus covered, and, perhaps, 
no other country possesses such a variety of species. The 
fern trees of New Zealand are of several kinds, and so abun- 
dant as to form a striking ffiature of its landscape ; they are 
found in every part of those islands ; they frequently attain a 
height of fifty feet, and some are occasionally found branched; 
in the shale and sandstone of the British coal measures similar 
stems of fern trees are met with . The vast number of beautiful 
mosses, Jungermania hepatica, lichens , and especially Lyco- 
podia, also form a distinguishing feature of its flora. The 
largest known representative of the gigantic Lepidodendron 
is the Lycopodium densum of New Zealand, which attains a 
height of fully four feet, having a stiff woody stem half-an- 
inch in diameter, and so tough and strong that formerly the 
