non-edible character, that up to the present time we know not that a single herbivorous animal lived among its shades. From all that appears, it may be inferred that it had not to serve the purposes of the floras of the passing time, in which, according to the poet, "The world's bread depends on the shooting of a seed." [Illustration: Fig. 13. FERN? of Lower Old Red Sandstone. Orkney. (Nat. Size.)] The flora of the Coal Measures was the richest and most luxuriant, in at least individual productions, with which the fossil botanist has formed any acquaintance. Never before or since did our planet bear so rank a vegetation as that of which the numerous coal seams and inflammable shales of the carboniferous period form but a portion of the remains,--the portion spared, in the first instance, by dissipation and decay, and in the second by the denuding agencies. Almost all our coal,--the stored up fuel of a world,--forms but a comparatively small part of the produce of this wonderful flora. Amid much that was so strange and antique of type in its productions as to set the analogies of the botanist at fault, there occurred one solitary order, not a few of whose species closely resembled their cogeners of the present time. I refer, of course, to its ferns. And these seem to have formed no small proportion of the entire flora of the period. Francis estimates the recent dorsiferous ferns of Great Britain at thirty-five species, and the species of all the other genera at six more,--forty-one species in all; and as the flowering plants of the country do not fall short of fourteen hundred species, the ferns bear to them the rather small proportion of about one to thirty-five; whereas of the British Coal Measure flora, in which we do not yet reckon quite three hundred species of plants, about a hundred and twenty were ferns. Three sevenths of the entire carboniferous flora of Britain belonged to this familiar class; and for about fifty species more we can discover no nearer analogies than those which connect them with the fern allies. And if with the British Coal Measure we include those also of the Continent of America, we shall find the proportions in favor of the ferns still greater. The number of carboniferous plants hitherto described amounts, says M. Ad. Brogniart, to about five hundred, and of these two hundred and fifty,--one half of the whole,--were ferns. [Illustration: Fig. 14.] [Illustration: Fig. 15.] [Illustration: Fig. 16.] [Illustration: Fig. 17.] [Illustration: Fig. 18.] [Illustration: Fig. 19.] [Illustration: FERNS OF THE COAL MEASURES.[6]] [Illustration: Fig. 20. ALTINGIA EXCELSA. Norfolk Island Pine. (Young Specimen.)]