'When we enter on the Carboniferous, we "are surrounded by the spoils of the first great woody era." Now, during the Carboniferous period, it cannot be denied that we have every requisite for supporting vegetable life, and the most undeniable evidence of its existence by the fossiliferous preservation of near 500 species. These were peculiar to the Carboniferous period. They died away and have not left one species specifically the same with our present vegetation. 'Further, there is scarcely any evidence of a true exogen up to and through the vast and immeasurable periods of the coal measures; and he who dreams that, in the woods of the primeval world there flourished the oak, the elm, and the hundreds of our other forest productions, introduces in the landscape a feature equally immaginative to the wildest Eastern allegory. Of the great family of the leguminosae we have no trace until we come to the London clay, forming a part of the eocene series. In the same formation (deposited in the geological calculation tens of thousands of years past, and hundreds of thousands of years subsequent to the Carboniferous era) we have abundance of fossil fruits—-palm nuts, custard apples, and the gourd and melon family. That the most delicate and perishable parts of vegetable structure can be preserved through immense periods of time, is shown by the state of these, and also of the fossil ligneous coverings of nuciferous fruits, cones of firs, and even the indication of flowers. This preservation of parts of fructification, and the pollen of coniferae, displays the art with which nature embalms her relics. Who, having examined the fossils of the Carboniferous beds, can fail being struck with amazement at the clear and distinct tracing of leaves and forms of the most delicate articulation and structure? We have, also, in our coal measures, found trees of species long extinct, thirty to forty feet high, with roots attached as they grew in situ.
'These were of a structure far more liable to perish than the hard, close grained exogens of our days. But palaeontology discloses that nature has been guided in her formations by certain laws pre-eminently evidenced by her vegetable productions.
'A large portion of the earth's surface, we may infer from analogy, in the Carboniferous ages had the appearance of an immense Polynesia of equable temperature, where her peculiar vegetable productions grew in immense profusion, and, for their species, attained gigantic size.
'Immediately after this period, land vegetation almost disappears; and not until the deposition of the tertiaries do we find the dawning of new species of varied structures. After entering thereon, an entirely different view opens to us. Birch, pines, and evergreen shrubs, species of the orange and gourd families, of the leguminosae and mallows, abound. We have here wherewith to make a forest, a garden, a feast. Now all these floras depart in type more or less from their predecessors; each in its turn died out, as Buffon emphatically states, because "time fought against them." They are peculiar to the days of their existence; but the past and the present unite in proclaiming, trumpet-tongued, that these multitudinous species had neither one centre nor one period of creation. The remarkable statement of the much-regretted Professor Edward Forbes, in his presidential address to the Geological Society in 1854, of the fauna or animal life of the creation, applies more strongly, if possible, to the flora. "More evident does it become every day," said that eminent naturalist, "that the old notion of an universal primaeval fauna is untenable, and that at all epochs, from the earliest preserved to us to the latest, there were natural history provinces in geographical space."
'Now we find that, although seeds, herbs, and flowers and plants were stated to have been "created," "made," or "formed," on the third day, we find no evidence of their existence during periods incalculable subsequent to the appearance of animal life. Any short period of non-appearance might not satisfy the requirements for the proof of "non-existence;" but the astounding fact or the absence of the vegetation specifically the same as the present, through all the intervening series from the earliest dawn of life to the tertiary, can leave no doubt on any unbiassed or candid mind of their "non-existence" in the early ages of the created world, and of their subsequent altered structure. May we not fairly argue and expect that in such multitudinous species some evidence of their existence during enormous periods (especially when we find remains of other vegetable forms and animal life abound) would appear. And if this one day's work does not disclose the whole vegetable creation, when or at what period did the subsequent one take place?
'I apprehend I have shown circumstances surrounding the negative evidence, to give to the non-appearance of land vegetation through the periods of the Silurian and Devonian the force of proof of nonexistence.
'I also submit that I have shown, by direct evidence, that there was no oneness of creation of vegetable life, but that altered forms and structure were peculiar to periods in which they flourished; and that there never did exist any immense primaeval flora as narrated in Genesis.
'I have thus far had the task of showing how negative evidence,. in the non-appearance and the subsequent varied forms, contradict the order of oneness in the creation or "formation" of vegetable life.
'I will now produce positive evidence bearing upon the same discrepancies. We have in the third day the creation of vegetable life, but no animal life until the fifth day—then we have (we must be excused reiteration) fish and fowl and the whales, whilst on the sixth and last day were brought forth creeping things. The first sign of animal life yet discovered is of the radiate class, in the lowest zone of the lower Silurian. We have another class of animal life, the articulata,
in the same zone; and we have some three hundred species of molluscs through the silurian. Nay, so large is the last named class at this early period, that it is denominated by American geologists "the age of molluscs." I must remind our readers that during the whole of this immeasurable age, we have not a single authenticated land plant; nay, further, we have fish, the creation of the fifth day, before aught of the third day's creation appears.