Having thus glanced at the natural history and varieties of coal, we may here try and realize the flora of the carboniferous era. An examination of the fossils of this period enables us to come to undoubted conclusions concerning the trees and plants of that era, so that it is no mere dream to look upon a picture like the following, and see in it a landscape of the coal-forming time of the British islands.

FLORA OF THE COAL MEASURES RESTORED.

The sun then poured down his golden beams of heat and light, and a tropical climate prevailed in our now cold and humid England. The mountain tops were gilded with his rays; a vast ocean studded with islands, and these crowned with gigantic palms and ferns, then covered our northern hemisphere. In that ocean but few fish were to be found, though many rare molluscous animals swam to and fro, enjoying their brief term of life, and discharging all their appropriate functions. Mountain streams discharged their muddy waters into this ocean, leaving along their margin course broken trees, vegetables, grasses and ferns. The giant Lepidodendron looked like a monarch of the ancient world, while around him smaller ferns, vying with each other in beauty and grace, grew, “first the blade” and then the ripened frond, until, in obedience to the great law of organic life, they died and decayed, and became material for the coming man’s future use. But amidst all this prodigal luxuriousness of the vegetable world, there appears to have been neither bird nor beast to break the monotony of the scene; all was silent as the grave—rank, moist verdure below; magnificent ferns and palms above, and the stillness of death on every side.[[61]]

Let us, however, glance at the principal ferns, whose fossil remains we have often found at the mouth of many a coalpit thrown out among the waste. The uncouth names given to them, uncouth only in appearance, must not deter the reader from his acquaintance with their peculiarities; for are not the names of botanical science almost, if not quite, as repellent at first? This star-shaped beauty, (1) the asterophyllite, (from aster, a star, and phyllon, a leaf,) was a common one; this (2) is the sphenopteris (from sphēn, a wedge, and pteron, a wing), so named from a fancied resemblance of the petals of the frond to a wedge; the next (3) is the pecopteris (from pekos, a comb, and pteron, a wing), from a resemblance of the frond to the teeth of a comb; the next (4) is the odontopteris (from odous, a tooth, and pteron, a wing), and in this the frond is something like the jaws of a shark bound together by a central stem, from which they diverge; and the last (5), our favourite, is the neuropteris (from neuros, a nerve, and pteron, a wing), on account of the exquisite beauty with which the fibres, like nerves, distribute themselves.

“Besides the ferns, then growing to a great size, there were other plants whose modern representatives are uniformly small; but as the resemblance in this case is simply one of general form, and the great majority of other trees seem to possess no living type to which they can be referred, it is by no means impossible that these also may be completely lost. One example of them is seen in a plant, fragments of which are extremely common in the coal measures, and which has been called calamite.[[62]] The remains of calamites consist of jointed fragments, which were originally cylindrical, but are now almost always crushed and flattened. They resemble very closely in general appearance the common jointed reed, growing in marshes, and called equisetum, or mare’s tail; but instead of being confined to a small size, they would seem to have formed trees, having a stem more than a foot in diameter, and jointed branches and leaves of similar gigantic proportions. They were evidently soft and succulent, and very easily crushed. They seem to have grown in great multitudes near the place where the coal is now accumulated; and though often broken, they seldom bear marks of having being transported from a distance.”[[63]] The fossils of the carboniferous system here figured we found not long since in the neighbourhood of Stockport.

CALAMITES.