These two big groups from the Palæozoic include practically all the ferns that then flourished. They have been spoken of (together with a few other types of which little is known) as the _Primofilices_, a name which emphasizes their primitive characters. As can be seen by the complex organization of the genera, however, they themselves had advanced far beyond their really primitive ancestors. There is clear indication that the Botryopterideæ were in a period of change, what might almost be termed a condition of flux, and that from their central types various families separated and specialized. Behind the Botryopterideæ, however, we have no specimens to show us the connection between them and the simpler groups from which they must have sprung. From a detailed comparative study of plant anatomy we can deduce some of the essential characters of such ancestral plants, but here the realm of fossil botany ceases, to give place to theoretical speculation. As a fact, there is a deep abyss between the ferns and the other families of the Pteridophytes, which is not yet bridged firmly enough for any but specialists, used to the hazardous footing on such structures, to attempt to cross it. Until the buttresses and pillars of the bridge are built of the strong stone of fossil structures we must beware of setting out on what would prove a perilous journey. In the Coal Measures and previous periods we see the ferns already represented by two large families, differing greatly from each other, and from the main families of modern ferns which sprung at a later date from some stock which we have not yet recognized. But though their past is so obscure, the palæozoic ferns and their allies throw a brilliant light on the course of evolution of the higher groups of plants, and the gulf between ferns and seed-bearing types may be said to be securely bridged by the Botryopterideæ and the Pteridosperms. CHAPTER XIV PAST HISTORIES OF PLANT FAMILIES VII. The Lycopods The present-day members of this family are not at all impressive, and in their lowliness may well be overlooked by one who is not interested in unpretending plants. The fresh green mosslike _Selaginella_ grown by florists as ornamental borders in greenhouses and the creeping “club moss” twining among the heather on a Highland moor are probably the best known of the living representatives of the Lycopods. In the past the group held a very different position, and in the distant era of the Coal Measures it held a dominant one. Many of the giants of the forest belonged to the family (see frontispiece), and the number of species it contained was very great. Let us turn at once to this halcyon period of the group. The history of the times intervening between it and the present is but the tale of the dying out of the large species, and the gradual shrinking of the family and dwarfing of its representative genera.