The sun then poured down his golden beams of heat and light, and a tropical climate prevailed in our now cold and humid England. The mountain tops were gilded with his rays; a vast ocean studded with islands, and these crowned with gigantic palms and ferns, then covered our northern hemisphere. In that ocean but few fish were to be found, though many rare molluscous animals swam to and fro, enjoying their brief term of life, and discharging all their appropriate functions. Mountain streams discharged their muddy waters into this ocean, leaving along their margin course broken trees, vegetables, grasses and ferns. The giant Lepidodendron looked like a monarch of the ancient world, while around him smaller ferns, vying with each other in beauty and grace, grew, “first the blade” and then the ripened frond, until, in obedience to the great law of organic life, they died and decayed, and became material for the coming man’s future use. But amidst all this prodigal luxuriousness of the vegetable world, there appears to have been neither bird nor beast to break the monotony of the scene; all was silent as the grave—rank, moist verdure below; magnificent ferns and palms above, and the stillness of death on every side.[61] [Illustration: Fossil] [Illustration: Fossil] Let us, however, glance at the principal ferns, whose fossil remains we have often found at the mouth of many a coalpit thrown out among the waste. The uncouth names given to them, uncouth only in appearance, must not deter the reader from his acquaintance with their peculiarities; for are not the names of botanical science almost, if not quite, as repellent at first? This star-shaped beauty, (1) the _asterophyllite_, (from _aster_, a star, and _phyllon_, a leaf,) was a common one; this (2) is the _sphenopteris_ (from _sphēn_, a wedge, and _pteron_, a wing), so named from a fancied resemblance of the petals of the frond to a wedge; the next (3) is the _pecopteris_ (from _pekos_, a comb, and _pteron_, a wing), from a resemblance of the frond to the teeth of a comb; the next (4) is the _odontopteris_ (from _odous_, a tooth, and _pteron_, a wing), and in this the frond is something like the jaws of a shark bound together by a central stem, from which they diverge; and the last (5), our favourite, is the _neuropteris_ (from _neuros_, a nerve, and _pteron_, a wing), on account of the exquisite beauty with which the fibres, like nerves, distribute themselves.