This book is dedicated to college students, to the senior pupils of good schools where the subject is beginning to find a place in the higher courses of Botany, but especially to all those who take an interest in plant evolution because it forms a thread in the web of life whose design they wish to trace. M. C. STOPES. _December, 1909._ Contents Chap. Page I. Introductory 1 II. Various Kinds of Fossil Plants 6 III. Coal, the most Important of Plant Remains 22 IV. The Seven Ages of Plant Life 33 V. Stages in Plant Evolution 43 VI. Minute Structure of Fossil Plants— Likenesses to Living Ones 53 VII. ″ ″ Differences from Living Ones 69 VIII. Past Histories of Plant Families— (i) Flowering Plants 79 IX. ″ ″ (ii) Higher Gymnosperms 86 X. ″ ″ (iii) Bennettitales 102 XI. ″ ″ (iv) The Cycads 109 XII. ″ ″ (v) Pteridosperms 114 XIII. ″ ″ (vi) The Ferns 124 XIV. ″ ″ (vii) The Lycopods 133 XV. ″ ″ (viii) The Horsetails 145 XVI. ″ ″ (ix) Sphenophyllales 153 XVII. ″ ″ (x) The Lower Plants 161 XVIII. Fossil Plants as Records of Ancient Countries 168 XIX. Conclusion 174 APPENDIX I. List of Requirements for a Collecting Expedition 183 II. Treatment of Specimens 184 III. Literature 186 Glossary 188 Footnotes 193 Index 193 ANCIENT PLANTS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The lore of the plants which have successively clothed this ancient earth during the thousands of centuries before men appeared is generally ignored or tossed on one side with a contemptuous comment on the dullness and “dryness” of fossil botany.