“Didn’t they have trees then like ours?” asked Jules.
“No,” replied his uncle; “we do not find in our coal mines any signs of the existence of trees resembling those of our day. Nowhere in the world, in fact, are there now to be seen any such forms of plant-life as flourished so abundantly in those remote ages; or if any still exist that are at all analogous, they must be sought in the islands of the tropical seas. No vegetable growth of that coal epoch, whether tree or bush or simple cluster of leaves, [[340]]bore flowers. The splendors of the corolla were not to appear until a later period.
“For the most part there were only tall stems or stalks, without branches, of equal size from top to bottom, and furrowed with channels or dotted with large points arranged in spiral lines. At the top a tuft of enormous leaves balanced itself, the under surface of each leaf bearing elongated or rounded swellings containing a fine brown dust, each grain of which was a seed for the propagation of the plant.
“Plants that thus bear their seeds, or spores, in powdery masses on the under side of the leaves are called ferns. A number of species flourish in our part of the world. They are unpretentious plants, fond of shade and coolness. Old damp walls, rocks that drip water drop by drop, the darkest corners of our woods—these are the customary haunts of the fern.
“A short underground stock and a sparse cluster of leaves, very elegantly shaped, it is true, constitute our native ferns. Those of the coal epoch were of a different pattern. Some of them displayed at the top of a stem as tall as our poplars a cluster of leaves five or six meters in length. They are called tree-ferns, and they contributed the greater part of the coal-forming material.
“The accompanying illustration will give you an idea of what the vegetation of that period must have looked like. What strange trees! How different from our oaks and maples and hemlocks! The soil is a liquid mud in which lie and rot the tree-trunks [[341]]prostrated by the weight of years; the air is sultry, moist, heavy, strongly impregnated with a moldy smell; and the density of the foliage barely admits a few sunbeams to flicker over the surface of the stagnant pools.
Imaginary View of a Forest of the Coal Epoch
“Everywhere profound silence. No song of bird bursts forth from the foliage of those tall fern-trees, for the bird is not yet in existence. No foot of quadruped treads the ground, for the quadruped with its coat of fur will not come until much later. Some lizards lurking in the rock-fissures, some large dragon-flies at the water’s edge, some odious scorpions under the heaps of dead leaves—that is all the animal-life to be found in the forests that gave us our coal.” [[342]]