FERNS, FOSSILS AND FUEL 
fern plants and as the gymnosperms, which are true seed 
plants. Their common origin, if there was one, must 
have existed at a much earlier date, probably contempo¬ 
raneously with the psilophytales and possibly even earlier. 
It is to the credit of the Curator of Paleobotany in the 
New York State Museum at Albany, Miss Winifred 
Goldring, that the Gilboa flora has been worked out 
in such minute detail, and she has made us especially 
familiar with one type of a seed-bearing, fern-like tree 
to which she gave the name Eospermatopteris, meaning 
“early seed fern.” The resconstruction at Albany also 
shows that there were tree-like club-mosses of considerable 
size in the late Devonian period. These come to a high 
development in the next two periods, the Mississippian 
and the Pennsylvanian. 
A third large group of plants represented in restora¬ 
tion at Albany are tall gymnospermous trees, distantly 
related to our present-day conifers. Late Devonian floras 
of all these types are known from many other parts of 
the world, from Europe, Asia, North America, and the 
Arctic. 
In the Mississippian formation, which follows the 
Devonian, extensive marine deposits were laid down, but 
the fresh-water deposits are comparatively small. There 
are a great many plant fossils and still more fossil shells 
64 
