was so
strange and antique of type in its productions as to set the analogies
of the botanist at fault, there occurred one solitary order, not a few
of whose species closely resembled their cogeners of the present time. I
refer, of course, to its ferns. And these seem to have formed no small
proportion of the entire flora of the period. Francis estimates the
recent dorsiferous ferns of Great Britain at thirty-five species, and
the species of all the other genera at six more,--forty-one species in
all; and as the flowering plants of the country do not fall short of
fourteen hundred species, the ferns bear to them the rather small
proportion of about one to thirty-five; whereas of the British Coal
Measure flora, in which we do not yet reckon quite three hundred species
of plants, about a hundred and twenty were ferns. Three sevenths of the
entire carboniferous flora of Britain belonged to this familiar class;
and for about fifty species more we can discover no nearer analogies
than those which connect them with the fern allies. And if with the
British Coal Measure we include those also of the Continent of America,
we shall find the proportions in favor of the ferns still greater. The
number of carboniferous plants hitherto described amounts, says M. Ad.
Brogniart, to about five hundred, and of these two hundred and
fifty,--one half of the whole,--were ferns.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.]

[Illustration: Fig. 15.]

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

[Illustration: Fig. 18.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

[Illustration: FERNS OF THE COAL MEASURES.[6]]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

ALTINGIA EXCELSA.

Norfolk Island Pine. (Young Specimen.)]

Rising in the scale from the lower to the higher vegetable forms of the
system,--from its ferns to its trees,--we find great conifers,--so great
that they must have raised their heads more than a hundred feet over the
soil; and such was their abundance in this neighborhood, that one can
scarce examine a fragment of coal beside one's household fire that is
not charged with their carbonized remains. Though marked by certain
peculiarities of structure, they bore, as is shown by the fossil trunks
of Granton and Craigleith, the familiar outlines of true coniferous
trees; and would mayhap have differed no more in appearance from their
successors of the same order that now live in our forests, than these
differ from the conifers of New Zealand or of New South Wales. We have