'The first evidence we have in the Devonian of terrestrial vegetation is a doubtful specimen of the fern tribe; yet, through these immense periods, a large surface of dry land is evidenced by the extent of the sedimentary deposits of the earlier stratified formations; for, as Professor Nicoll observes, "any sedimentary deposition implies not only the existence of a sea in which its materials were deposited, but of lands from which they were derived." 'When we enter on the Carboniferous, we "are surrounded by the spoils of the first great woody era." Now, during the Carboniferous period, it cannot be denied that we have every requisite for supporting vegetable life, and the most undeniable evidence of its existence by the fossiliferous preservation of near 500 species. These were peculiar to the Carboniferous period. They died away and have not left one species specifically the same with our present vegetation. {11} 'Further, there is scarcely any evidence of a true exogen up to and through the vast and immeasurable periods of the coal measures; and he who dreams that, in the woods of the primeval world there flourished the oak, the elm, and the hundreds of our other forest productions, introduces in the landscape a feature equally immaginative to the wildest Eastern allegory. Of the great family of the leguminosae we have no trace until we come to the London clay, forming a part of the eocene series. In the same formation (deposited in the geological calculation tens of thousands of years past, and hundreds of thousands of years subsequent to the Carboniferous era) we have abundance of fossil fruits---palm nuts, custard apples, and the gourd and melon family. That the most delicate and perishable parts of vegetable structure can be preserved through immense periods of time, is shown by the state of these, and also of the fossil ligneous coverings of nuciferous fruits, cones of firs, and even the indication of flowers. This preservation of parts of fructification, and the pollen of coniferae, displays the art with which nature embalms her relics. Who, having examined the fossils of the Carboniferous beds, can fail being struck with amazement at the clear and distinct tracing of leaves and forms of the most delicate articulation and structure? We have, also, in our coal measures, found trees of species long extinct, thirty to forty feet high, with roots attached as they grew _in situ_. 'These were of a structure far more liable to perish than the hard, close grained exogens of our days. But palaeontology discloses that nature has been guided in her formations by certain laws pre-eminently evidenced by her vegetable productions. 'A large portion of the earth's surface, we may infer from analogy, in the Carboniferous ages had the appearance of an immense Polynesia of equable temperature, where her peculiar vegetable productions grew in immense profusion, and, for their species, attained gigantic size.