The course of creation

by John Anderson

Calamite.

But of all the plants found in the coal-measures, the coniferæ or pine tribe, distinguished by their punctated woody tissue, are the most interesting, whether we consider their characteristic properties, extensive distribution, antiquity, and consistency of habit through all the epochs and changes of creation. Unlike the tree-forms already noticed, the pines grow now as they grew before, inhabiting the same places, and preserving the same appearances in bulk and figure. In structure the coniferæ occupy a place intermediate between cellurares and vasculares, connected with the former through the lycopodiums, and with the latter by the myriceæ, or aromatic gale tribe. The scales of the cones are regarded by botanists as true foliage or reduced leaves, and in this respect they approximate to the genus zamia, of the order cycadeæ, where these organs are distinctly developed as carpellary leaves. Thus widely connected through the chain of vegetable life, the fossil pines, discovered in our coal-fields, form also the most interesting link between the present and the remote past, showing similar conditions of vegetable existence and forest landscape. No class of plants have been more useful to man than the whole pine family; none are more universal in their distribution over the face of the globe; none are possessed of such powers of endurance, existing through all time, and natives of every part of the world, from the perpetual snows of Arctic America, to the hottest regions of the Indian Archipelago. These trees differ as remarkably in form as in size, ranging through every gradation from the stinted juniper of the Grampians to the stately cedars of Lebanon. And the fossil specimens, huge in dimensions as those of Craigleith are, do not excel the existing races. The araucaria, or Norfolk Island pine, attains a height of two hundred feet; and in the Oregon territory of North-West America, there are species of the fir tribe (P. Lambertiana and P. Douglasii), which rise to even still more gigantic proportions. Figuratively, it is said of the cedar, that its branches shall cover the earth, and in the shadow thereof all fowl of every wing shall dwell: literally and truly we find, that members of the same family have existed in all lands, and flourished in the mountains through all ages.

Compared with the present condition of things, New Zealand bears the most striking resemblance in the character of its vegetation to the flora of the ancient carboniferous age. “The number of species of plants at present known is 632, of which 314 are dicotyledonous, and the rest, or 318, are monocotyledonous and cellular. The number of monocotyledonous is very small in comparison with the cellular; there are 76 species. The grasses have given way to ferns, for the ferns and fern-like plants are the most numerous in New Zealand, and cover immense districts. They replace the gramineæ or grasses of other countries, and give a character to all the open land of the hills and plains. Some of the arborescent species grow to thirty feet and more in height, and the variety and elegance of their forms, from the minutest species to the giants of their kind, are most remarkable.”[4]

These few types of the flora of the ancient world clearly indicate the course and progress of creation. A dense vegetable covering already existed over all the earth. No grasses, indeed, as yet are found to have clothed the plains. But marsh plants grew luxuriantly in the waters. Fucoids and algæ abounded in the seas. The hills and mountains raised high in air their pines, palms, and fern-trees; nor would creepers and parasites be wanting, climbing to their topmost branches and mingling their bright enlivening hues with the dark somber shades of the forest. Earth heard the voice of its Maker, and everything good and seasonable sprang from its teeming bosom.

The carboniferous limestones are everywhere loaded with animal remains. Every member of the series, the ironstones, sandstones, shales, and even the coal itself, all abound in relics of the past; and, as was to be expected, the fossils chiefly belong to marine forms of life. And in these there is no great departure, as might likewise be inferred, from the orders, and even generic types, we have been surveying in the lower formations. But there is an increase in the species of some of them, as well as the introduction of new and distinct creations altogether.

1. Product. scabriculus; 2. Inoceramus vetustus; 3. Bellerophon tangentialis.

Thus the corals and encrinites remain with scarcely a change in outward form, but of increasing variety, and in countless myriads. The trilobites are nearly extinct, while the annelidæ, which appear not in the devonian system, return to the stage in greater numbers and diversity of structure. The conchiferæ are likewise enlarged in every order; as also the crustaceæ, which are more than quadrupled. Pteropodæ present four genera in the silurian group, decline to one in the devonian, which genus is not found in the carboniferous, but a new one takes its place. The brachiopodæ are again very abundant, as they were in the two former groups. The most characteristic shells of the order and period are the productus, spirifer, terebratula. One genus of heteropoda, the bellerophon, appeared in the silurian rocks, of which there were eleven species. Eight species occur in the devonian system along with a new genus, porcellia. The bellerophon numbers nineteen species in the carboniferous rocks, and the porcellia, which occurs also, contains three.

The cephalopods, the most predaceous of their kind, lose generically, while they multiply prodigiously in species during the latter epoch. Thus the goniatites alone amount to fifty-four, the nautili to forty-two, and the orthoceratites, which had declined to twelve in the devonian, swell to thirty-two species in the carboniferous series.