common in the lowlands near the swamps as to give the era its name 
“Age of Cycads’’. Today their fossil remains are widely distri- 
buted over the earth— in Greenland, the United States, Mexico, 
northern Asia and other regions, now far too cold for them, for 
their living representatives are mainly found in either the tropics 
or sub-tropics. The hills were covered with dense forests of con- 
ifers, the relatives of our present day pines, cypresses and arau- 
carias (Norfolk Island pines). These early Mesozoic landscapes, 
though luxuriant, were still gloomy, without the cheery song of 
bird or the bright colors of dowers. The fern forests of New 
Zealand are said to give the best modern picture of the plant life 
of this period. The beautiful agatized forest of Arizona (Chalce- 
dony Park), one hundred square miles or so in area, is one vast 
cemetery of their remains. Where once, ages ago, probably ex- 
isted a beautiful and nourishing vegetation now is naught but 
desolate desert, where even the adaptive dowering plant has a 
hard time to preserve its existence. 
As the Mesozoic era progressed toward its noon, cycads be- 
came ever more diversided in form and more abundant. Today, 
the paleobotanist Scott estimates the ratio of cycads to other 
vascular plants as about one per thousand, while in the Mesozoic 
era, their ratio was about one in three. Their distribution was 
world wide, cycad fossils being especially common in New Jersey, 
England, Maryland, northern Mexico and the Black Hills area of 
South Dakota and Wyoming. In England, the miners called them 
“crow’s nests”, while in the West our ranchmen refer to them as 
“petrided cactus”. The latter region is probably the richest 
cycad cemetery in the world, over one thousand trunks belonging 
to twenty-nine or more species having been unearthed or picked 
up there. Most of these belong to a peculiar group known as 
Bennettitales, forms with “dowers” somewhat resembling - mag- 
nolia blossoms. This remarkable similarity has led several in- 
vestigators to think they might be the primitive ancestors of our 
dowering plants. Other investigators, however, equally prom- 
inent and authoritative, believe plants related to our pines and 
spruces to have been the more likely progenitors. 
In the main, the middle Mesozoic dora was a continuation 
from that of the earlier part of the era, the chief difference being- 
in the greater abundance of characteristic Mesozoic plants, such as 
ginkgos, cycads and forms of horsetails, conifers and ferns. 
Northern Europe was covered with tree ferns, such as now gi-ow 
in much warmer regions. In the extreme north (Spitzbergen) , tree 
trunks have been found showing annual rings, indicating the 
begining of seasons — the coming of winter and summer. Over 
the rest of the earth, however, the evidence points toward the 
existence still of a warm, moist, sub-tropical climate. 
And thus we come to the latter half of the Mesozoic, that part 
of the era in which occured an event of more profound importance 
to the world, as seen through man’s eyes, than either the publica- 
tion of “Darwin’s Origin of Species”, the French Revolution, or 
the discovery of America. For, in this part of the era, we first 
dnd dowering plants imbedded in the rocks. From whence they 
came and what were their ancestors is still largely mystery. Cur- 
iously their most ancient remains have been found only in a few 
areas in the northern hemisphere and from this, one may infer 
that here they originated, later migrating as successful settlers 
to every nook and corner of the world, excepting the oceans. 
These early dowering plants appear to have been largely trees and 
shrubs, among which were sassafras, poplar, dg trees, tulip trees 
and others. Of course, herbaceous forms may have existed on the 
higher lands, but being comparatively fragile, were not preserved. 
