. The testimony of the rocks; . ZAMIA FENEONis. (Portland Oolite.)prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened 70 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the pros-pect, the slim columns of an elder Alhambra, roughenedwith arabesque tracery and exquisite filagree work. In the Oolitic flora we find a few peculiar features intro-duced. The Cycadese, — a family of plants allied to theferns on the one hand, and to the conifers on the other, andwhich in their general aspect not a little resemble stuntedpalms, — appear in this flora for the first time. Its
. The testimony of the rocks; . ZAMIA FENEONis. (Portland Oolite.)prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened 70 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the pros-pect, the slim columns of an elder Alhambra, roughenedwith arabesque tracery and exquisite filagree work. In the Oolitic flora we find a few peculiar features intro-duced. The Cycadese, — a family of plants allied to theferns on the one hand, and to the conifers on the other, andwhich in their general aspect not a little resemble stuntedpalms, — appear in this flora for the first time. Its coniferousgenera, too, receive great accessions to their numbers, and Fig. MANTELLIA NIDIFORMIS. (Portland Dirt-bed.) begin to resemble, more closely than at an earlier period,the genera which still continue to exist. The cypresses, theyews, the thujas, the dammar as, aU make their earliest ap-pearance in the flora of the Oolite. Among our existingwoods there seem to be but two conifers (that attain to thedignity 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 o
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