delicate sculpturing. In walking among the ruins of
this ancient flora, the Palaeontologist almost feels as if he had got
among the broken fragments of Italian palaces, erected long ages ago,
when the architecture of Rome was most ornate, and every moulding was
roughened with ornament; and in attempting to call up in fancy the old
Carboniferous forests, he has to dwell on this peculiar feature as one
of the most prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened
above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the prospect, the slim
columns of an elder Alhambra, roughened with arabesque tracery and
exquisite filagree work.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

SIGILLARIA RENIFORMIS.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 30.

SIGILLARIA PACHYDERMA.

(One fourth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 31.

STIGMARIA FICOIDES.

(One fourth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 32.

FAVULARIA TESSELLATA.

(One fifth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 33.

LEPIDODENDRON OBOVATUM.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 34.

CYCAS REVOLUTA.

(_Recent._)]

[Illustration: Fig.35.

ZAMIA PUNGENS.

(_Recent._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 36.

ZAMIA FENEONIS (PORTLAND OOLITE.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 37.

MANTELLIA NIDIFORMIS.

(Portland Dirt-bed.)]

In the Oolitic flora we find a few peculiar features introduced. The
Cyeadeae,--a family of plants allied to the ferns on the one hand, and to
the conifers on the other, and which in their general aspect not a
little resemble stunted palms,--appear in this flora for the first time.
Its coniferous genera, too, receive great accessions to their numbers,
and begin to resemble, more closely than at an earlier period, the
genera which still continue to exist. The cypresses, the yews, the
thujas, the dammaras, all make their earliest appearance in the flora of
the Oolite. Among our existing woods there seem to be but two conifers
(that attain to the dignity of trees) indigenous to Britain,--the common
yew, _Taxus baccata_, and the common Scotch fir, _Pinus sylvestris_; and
yet we know that the latter alone formed, during the last few centuries,
great woods, that darkened for many miles together the now barren moors
and bare hill-sides of the Highlands of Scotland,--moors and hill-sides
that, though long since divested of their last tree, are still known by
their old name of _forests_. In the times of the Oolite, on the other
hand, Britain had from fourteen to twenty different