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With the marine population of the more ancient geological ages we find nothing but sea-weeds, of great variety, it is true, and, as it would seem, from some remains of the marine Cryptogams in early times, of immense size, as compared with modern sea-weeds. These were the lords of the forests all over the world in the Carboniferous period.
In the first stratified rocks in which any organic remains are found, the highest animals are fishes, and the highest plants are cryptogams; in the middle periods reptiles come in, accompanied by fern and moss forests; in later times quadrupeds are introduced, with a dicotyledonous vegetation.
Reptiles, many and various, gigantic in size, curious in form, some of them recalling the structure of fishes, others anticipating birdlike features, gave a new character to the animal world, while in the vegetable world the reign of the aquatic Cryptogams was over, and terrestrial Cryptogams, and, later, Gymnosperms and Monocotyledonous trees, clothed the earth with foliage.
Many of these he said were innocent guests of their host, but many guest plants were death to their host. This is for the benefit of those who say that the Gemiasmas are innocent plants and do no harm. All plants, phanerogams or cryptogams, can be divided into nocent or innocent, etc., etc.
Passing over the time when the first stratified deposits were accumulated under a universal ocean in which neither animals nor plants existed, there was an age in the physical history of the world when the lands consisted of low islands, when neither great depths nor lofty heights diversified the surface of the earth, when both the animal and vegetable creation, however numerous, was inferior to the later ones, and comparatively uniform in character, when marine Cryptogams were the highest plants, and Fishes were the highest animals.
It is important to note that some of these gigantic lycopods, which are classed with the CRYPTOGAMS, or flowerless plants, had pith and medullary rays dividing their cylinders into woody wedges. These characters connect them with the PHANEROGAMS, or flowering plants. Like so many of the organisms of the remote past, they were connecting types from which groups now widely separated have diverged.
The orange mushroom is also much eaten in the same regions, for it likewise loves the chestnut forest; but it may be mistaken by those who do not know the signs for its relative, the crimson-capped fly-agaric, one of the most deadly of cryptogams. After seeing the dish of cepes, I was not surprised to find many chestnut-trees along the road that I now took to St. Pantaleon.
We saw that at one time the evolutionist was puzzled by the clean division of animals into Invertebrate and Vertebrate, and the sudden appearance of the backbone in the chronicle: he was just as much puzzled by the sharp division of our plants into Cryptogams and Phanerogams, and the sudden appearance of the latter on the earth during the Coal-forest period.
The division of Vascular plants includes the far larger proportion of vegetation, both living and fossil, and these plants are built up of vessels and tissues of various shapes and character. All plants are divided into Cryptogams, or Flowerless, such as mosses, ferns, equisetums, and Phanerogams, or Flowering.
Of 700 specimens in one early Cretaceous deposit only 96 are Angiosperms; of 460 species in a later deposit about 400 are Angiosperms. They oust the cycads in Europe and America, as the cycads and conifers had ousted the Cryptogams. The change in the face of the earth would be remarkable.
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