. The testimony of the rocks; . y of trees) indigenous to Britain,—the common yew,Taxus baccata^ and the common Scotch fir, Pinus sylvestris;and yet we know that the latter alone formed, during thelast few centuries, great woods, that darkened for manymiles together the now barren moors and bare hill-sides ofthe Highlands of Scotland,—moors and hill-sides that,though long since divested of their last tree, are still knownby their old name of forests. In the times of the Oolite, HISTORY OF PLANTS. 71 on the other hand, Britain had from fourteen to twenty-different species of conifers ; and its
. The testimony of the rocks; . y of trees) indigenous to Britain,—the common yew,Taxus baccata^ and the common Scotch fir, Pinus sylvestris;and yet we know that the latter alone formed, during thelast few centuries, great woods, that darkened for manymiles together the now barren moors and bare hill-sides ofthe Highlands of Scotland,—moors and hill-sides that,though long since divested of their last tree, are still knownby their old name of forests. In the times of the Oolite, HISTORY OF PLANTS. 71 on the other hand, Britain had from fourteen to twenty-different species of conifers ; and its great forests, of whoseexistence we have direct evidence in the very abundantlignites of the system, must have possessed a richness andvariety which our ancient fir woods of the historic or humanperiod could not have possessed. With the Conifers andthe Cycadeae there were many ferns associated,—so many,that they still composed nearly tAvo fifths of the entire flora;and associated with these, though in reduced proportions,. EQUISETUM COLUMNAKE. (Nat. size.) we find the fern allies. The reduction, however, of theselast is rather in species than in individuals. The BroraCoal, one of the most considerable Oolitic seams in Europe,seems to have been formed almost exclusively of an ,— JE. columnare. In this flora the more equivoca\productions of the Coal Measures are represented by whatseems to be the last of the Calamites ; but it contains noLepidodendra,—no Ulodendra,—no Sigillaria,—no Favu, 72 THE PALiEONTOLOGICAL laria, — no Knorria or Halonia. Those monsters of the vegetable world that united to the forms of its humbler produc-tions the bulk of trees, had, with the solitary exception ofthe Calamites, passed into extinction ; and ere the close ofthe system they too had disappeared. The forms borne bymost of the Oolitic plants were comparatively familiar ^ith the Acrogens and Gymnogens we find the first indica-don of the Liliaceae, or lily-like plan
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