There are details too numerous to mention in connection with these coal-forming plants which go to prove that there were large regions of swampy ground near the sea where they were growing in a bright atmosphere and uniform climate. Extensive areas of coal, and geological evidence of still more extensive deposits, show that in Europe in the Coal Measure period there were vast flats, so near the sea level that they were constantly being submerged and appearing again as débris drifted and collected over them. Such a land area must have differed greatly from the Europe now existing, in all its features. But the whole continent did not consist of these flats; there were hills and higher ground, largely to the north-east, on which a dry land flora grew, a flora where several of the Pteridosperms and _Cordaites_ with its allies were the principal plants. These plants have leaves so organized as to suggest that they grew in a region where the climate was bright and dry. A fossil flora which has aroused much interest, particularly among geologists, is that known as the Glossopteris flora. This Palæozoic flora has in general characters similar to those of the European Permo-Carboniferous, but it has special features of its own, in particular the genus _Glossopteris_ and also the genera _Phyllotheca_ and _Schizoneura_. These genera, with a few others, are characteristic of the Permo-Carboniferous period in the regions in the Southern Hemisphere now known by the names of Australasia, South Africa, and South America, and in India. These regions, at that date, formed what is called by geologists “Gondwanaland”. In the rocks below those containing the plants there is evidence of glacial conditions, and it is not impossible that this great difference in climate accounts for the differences which exist between the flora of the Gondwanaland region and the Northern Hemisphere. Unfortunately we have not microscopically preserved specimens of the Glossopteris flora, which could be compared with those of our own Palæozoic.[15] To describe in detail the series of changes through which the seas and continents have passed belongs to the realm of pure geology. Here it is only necessary to point out how the evidence from the fossil plants may afford much information concerning these continents, and as our knowledge of fossil anatomy and of recent ecology increases, their evidence will become still more weighty. Even now, had we no other sources of information, we could tell from the plants alone where in the past continents were snow and ice, heat and drought, swamps and hilly land. However different in their systematic position or scale of evolutional development, plants have always had similar minute structure and similar physiological response to the conditions of climate and land surface, so that in their petrified cells are preserved the histories of countries and conditions long past.