Many bear strong resemblances at a first glance to others cultivated in our greenhouses, or growing wild in their favourite habitats, and some approximate so closely to living forms as to make it a question whether they should be classified with different genera or not. The number is remarkable, considering that not more than sixty distinct species are at present indigenous to Europe. The tree ferns of modern horticultural gardens, with their scar-marked trunks and branching fronds, like those from the Mauritius, Brazil, and the Isle of Bourbon, convey tolerable ideas of those of the coal-measure period. We have already spoken of the mare’s-tail of antediluvian times; it is seen in the full page representation, with its glorious head towering high, and the young shoots peering above the slime. Deep in the forest is a species sending forth silky streamers; and prostrate is a species of Lepidodendron, or scaly tree, with branches feathered to the end and bearing cones as scaly as the tree. Others also shoot out their leaves; the Ulodendron staggers beneath its large arm-bearing cones, whilst the seal-impressioned Sigillaria towers high and overtops the whole with its noble crown of foliage. The roots of the latter lie by thousands on our coal-banks, showing distinctly whence the smaller fibres started; some are still connected, being protected by a matrix that formed the sandy soil in which they grew. Water-reeds and forest trees, green parasitic plants, ribbed and jointed, sending forth long-entangling feelers, must have woven a mantle of vegetation rank, matted, and dense in shadow, over the marshy platform where reptiles lurked at intervals. Of the inhabitants of those newly-formed forest lands, scorpions, beetles, flies, and a few reptiles, are all that have yet been found among the relics of the Shropshire coalfields. Saving the buzzing of a beetle and the whirring flight of a scorpion, the shaking of great fronds and fruits, and the sighings of the forest as hot breezes shook the giant pines and rung the pendant catkins, or the sudden splash of some strange fish seizing upon its prey, no sounds were heard. Unlike our woods and copses, all was silence: no songs of birds, no carolling of larks, no warbling of thrushes, no lowing of cattle, no bleating of sheep, and no human voice to break the stillness. [Picture: Fern with wide leaves] [Picture: Fern with gapped leaves?] [Picture: Feathered fern] There were inequalities of surface then as now. The country had its uplands and its valleys, its rivers and its lakes, its dry and damp soils, its cool and sunny spots, but with one general genial climate reigning over all. * * * * * We have said on page 284 that Mr. Cranege lived in the house Mr. Moses now lives in. It should have been, where Mr. W. Hughes now lives, opposite the Wesleyan chapel.