IIG 
DR. LINDLEy’s description. 
“ It would hardly be credited by persons 
unacquainted with the evidence upon which 
such facts repose, that in the most dreary 
and desolate northern regions of the present 
day, there once flourished groves of trop¬ 
ical plants, of Coniferse, like the Norfolk 
Island and Araucarian Pines, of Bananas, 
Tree-ferns, huge Cacti, and Palms; that 
the marshes were filled with rush-like plants 
fifteen or twenty feet high, the coverts with 
ferns like the undergrowth of a West Indian 
Island. Yet nothing can well be more cer¬ 
tain than that such a description is far 
from being overcharged. In the coal for¬ 
mation, which may be considered the earli¬ 
est in w^hich the remains of land plants 
have been discovered, the flora of England 
consisted of ferns in amazing abundance, 
of large Coniferous trees, of species resem¬ 
bling Lycopodiacese, but of most gigantic di¬ 
mensions, of vast quantities of a tribe api)a- 
rently analogous to Cactm or Euphorbiaceje, 
but, perhaps, not identical with them, of 
Palms, and other Monocotyledones; and, 
finally, of numerous plants, the exact nature 
of which is as yet extremely doubtful. Be- 
