46 Development and Distribution of Vegetation. 
voiceless air. No song-birds perched upon the branches, no gaudy colored but- 
terflies flitted daintily above the sombre foliage. Vegetation reigned indeed, 
but claimed royalty only in profuseness and abundance. 
In the eras following the coal measures, the pine-like trees—the Coniferee, 
the palms and their allies became prominent; then in the Cretaceous or 
chalky formation just preceding the Tertiary, trees belonging to genera whose 
species make up large proportions of our forests, existed in considerable num- 
bers and gained sizes comparable to those we now know. 
Let it be noted that our birches, beeches, oaks, hickories, poplars, willows 
and the like have, to common eyes, inconspicuous flowers. Not a single flow- 
er hung out its bright-colored petels to the breezes of the early Cretaceous 
times. Grass and sedge-like plants, also similar to ours, then existed; but 
these again had flowers which only botanists with their magnifiers are likely 
to observe. To find the evidence of bright petals and sweetened nectaries we 
must descend through the long eras of the geological periods to near the times 
of the Tertiary rocks. In the so-called upper Cretaceous beds of Dakota — 
the most wonderful fossiliferous strata in existence in many respects— out of 
one hundred dicotyledonous plants described by Lesquereaux, sixty-one are 
apetalous, thirty-five polypetalous and one only monopetalous. The informa- 
tion we possess shows pretty clearly that flowers came into existence in the 
order here noted. The Conifereze and the early monocotyledons like sedges 
and grasses, together with the catkin-bearing trees, are apetalous, or at least 
would be so considered by people not botanists. Polypetalous monocotyledons 
like lilies, and polypetalous dicotyledons like buttercups came next. After 
these occur monopetalous regular flowers like blue-bells and finally those of 
curious irregular shapes like snap-dragonsand orchids. This is at least accord- 
ing to the numerical proportions of described fossils, and undoubtedly is the 
true order of appearance in the history of this interesting part of plant devel- 
ment, 
It is especially to be noticed that along with the evidence of the existence 
of bright-colored flowers, and particularly of those in which the petals are 
united, came the remains of butterflies and bees.. Flowers of the finest types 
and sweetest fragrance bejewelled the landscape and perfumed the air long 
ages before man came as the head and master of the organic world; but, it 
appears, not before insects paid their courtly attentions to them. A little 
further along your attention will be asked to some of these details. 
THE METAMORPHOSES OF PLANTS. 
Turning now to matters of quite another class, your indulgence is asked to 
the recitation of facts most of which must be familiar to many of you. 
In 1790, nearly a hundred years ago, a little work was published by the 
renowned Geethe entitled the Metamorphoses of Plants. The ideas which the 
great and versatile author embodied in this book were not really new; yet his 
promulgation of them in much better shape than they had ever before been 
presented, illustrated with wealth and accuracy of observation, now for the 
first time took possession of the minds of botanists, and became acknowledged 
as true. The theory was that all parts of plants, however different in appear- 
ance, however various in size, shape, color, texture or office, were in origin 
stems or leaves. The complex numbers of other parts as commonly recognized 
were all modifications of one or the other of these two. A root was a stem 
slightly changed in structure and given over to a special function. Bud scales 
and the parts of flowers were leaves. In actual fact leaves were flattened 
expansions of the stem. 
As the result of later studies, and essential agreement of ideas, four funda- 
mental parts are at present accepted, viz: the stem, the root, the leaf and the 
