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Equiseta, calamites, ferns, Voltzia, and a few of the other families found so abundantly in the preceding formation, here present themselves, but in diminished size and quantity. This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials of a peculiar and unexpected character respecting these early ages in the sandstones.
Many specimens of this family are found in the coal beds; it is thought they have contributed more to the substance of the coal than any other family. But, like the ferns and equisetaceae, they rise to a prodigious magnitude. In the forests of the coal era, the lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of firs in our forests, affording shade to the only less stately ferns and calamites.
Was there ever a better type of the French nation than this old soldier? As long as fortune smiles on them, it is "Marchons au diable!" and "Vive la gloire!" Directly they get beaten, it is "Ma pauvre patrie!" and "Les calamites affreuses de la guerre!"
The opinion of M. Brongniart that the Lepidostrobus is the fruit of Lepidodendron has been confirmed, for these strobili or fruits have been found terminating the tip of a branch of a well-characterised Lepidodendron in Coalbrook Dale and elsewhere. Calamites Sucowii, Brong.; natural size. Radical termination of a Calamite.
The Calamites of the coal-measures bore indeed a very striking resemblance, and were closely related, to our modern horse-tails, as the equiseta are popularly called; but in some respects they differed considerably. It is a somewhat graceful plant, and stands erect with a jointed stem.
Round them, as they gradually went down with the subsiding soil, calamites grew, at one level after another. In the Sydney coal-field fifty-nine fossil forests occur in superposition. Marine shells, found on mountain-tops far in the interior of continents, were regarded by theological writers as an indisputable illustration of the Deluge.
These and other acts of their own brought down upon Israel the curse of heaven and made them the subject of such calamites as Balaam could not himself pronounce against them. By suggesting this course to Balak, he may have obtained the coveted pay without directly disobeying God.
To this family belong two fossil genera of the coal, Equisetites and Calamites. They grew in dense brakes on sandy and muddy flats in the manner of modern Equisetaceae, and their remains are frequent in the coal. Asterophillites foliosus. Dawson, its foliage is distinguished by a true mid-rib, which is wanting in the leaves known to belong to some Calamites. Carruthers to be leaves of Calamites.
Many of the fernlike forms, however, have distinct affinities with the cycads, of which they may be the ancestors, and some bear seeds and must be classed as gymnosperms. Dense thickets, like cane or bamboo brakes, were composed of thick clumps of CALAMITES, whose slender, jointed stems shot up to a height of forty feet, and at the joints bore slender branches set with whorls of leaves.
The plants of this period are not the plants of to-day, though we still have some very degenerate representatives of them. The common horse-tail, with its angular, slender, leaflike branches and its club-shaped spore-bearing body, is a modern degenerate descendant of the treelike calamites of the Carboniferous forest.
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