sphere and fixed in the solid state. These great beds of graphite, therefore, imply the existence of abundance of vegetable life at the very commencement of the era of which we have any geological record.[1]
Ferns, as already stated, begin in the Middle Silurian formation with the Eopteris Morrieri. In the Devonian, we have 79 species, in the Carboniferous 627, and in the Permian 186 species; after which fossil ferns diminish greatly, though they are found in every formation; and the fact that fully 3000 living species are known, while the richest portion of the Tertiary in fossil plants—the Miocene—has only produced 87 species, will serve to indicate the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
The Equisetaceae (horsetails) which also first appear in the Silurian and reach their maximum development in the Coal formation, are, in all succeeding formations, far less numerous than ferns, and only thirty living species are known. Lycopodiaceae, though still more abundant in the Coal formation, are very rarely found in any succeeding deposit, though the living species are tolerably numerous, about 500 having been described. As we cannot suppose them to have really diminished and then increased again in this extraordinary manner, we have another indication of the exceptional nature of plant preservation and the extreme and erratic character of the imperfection of the record.
Passing now to the next higher division of plants—the gymnosperms—we find Coniferae appearing in the Upper Silurian, becoming tolerably abundant in the Devonian, and reaching a maximum in the Carboniferous, from which formation more than 300 species are known, equal to the number recorded as now living. They occur in all succeeding formations, being abundant in the Oolite, and excessively so in the Miocene, from which 250 species have been described. The allied family of gymnosperms, the Cycadaceae, first appear in the Carboniferous era, but very scantily; are most abundant in the Oolite, from which formation 116 species are known, and then steadily diminish to the Tertiary, although there are seventy-five living species.
We now come to the true flowering plants, and we first
- ↑ Sir J. William Dawson's Geological History of Plants, p. 18.
