THE ERA OF THE FERNS 
and published the results in a series of articles in the 
Transactions of the Royal Society of Scotland . From 
the well-preserved petrifacts it was possible for them to 
reconstruct the form of the land plants in detail. They 
analyzed them and compared them with the more primi¬ 
tive plants of the present day. 
It is well, however, to keep in mind that these very 
primitive types of fossil plants, found in the old red sand¬ 
stone formation of early Devonian times, do not neces¬ 
sarily represent the highest type of plants which grew 
during that period. There must have been a great many 
other types; to draw final conclusions from this single 
locality and the single group of plants found there would 
be as foolish as it would be for one to try to establish 
a complete modern flora by merely examining a mossy 
swamp or a grassy meadow, in France or England, and 
nothing else. 
Kidston and Lang established that their plants were 
a composite type which contained features of the pterido- 
phytes, the mosses, and the algae. There were different 
genera and species. The simplest did not even have 
leaves, but the highest types bore a scaly type of leaf. All 
these plants seem to have been of a creeping moss-like 
character, with little vertical stems one to four inches high, 
bearing small spore-capsules at their ends. The stem 
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