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A few coniferae of the genus Dacrydium here first appeared, and in the thickets just above the rocky surface we walked through groves of those splendid ferns Dipteris Horsfieldii and Matonia pectinata, which bear large spreading palmate fronds on slender stems six or eight feet high.
I therefore regard the juniper as the regular resin-purveyor, without, however, excluding the pine, the cypress and other Coniferae when the favourite shrub is absent. The bits of gravel in the lid are angular and chalky in the Marseilles nest; they are round and flinty in most of the Serignan nests.
I fancied I already felt it crawling through my veins! One more struggle to find the clearings! I rushed on, now guided by chance. I endeavoured to keep in a straight line, but to no purpose. The huge pyramidal buttresses of the trees, so characteristic of these coniferae, barred my way; and, in passing around them, I soon lost all knowledge of my direction.
After they are fully ripe, they spread their shell-like scales and allow the brown-winged seeds to fly in the mellow air, while the empty cones remain to beautify the tree until the coming of a fresh crop. The staminate cones of all the coniferae are beautiful, growing in bright clusters, yellow, and rose, and crimson.
Then, like Diedrich Knickerbocker, who felt that he must trace the province of New York back to the origin of the universe, he can look upon his coniferae and feel that his latest work is in accord with one of the earliest laws of creation.
In New Zealand the coniferae attain their maximum in numbers, constituting 1/62 part of all the flowering plants; whereas in a wide district around the Cape of Good Hope they do not form 1/1600 of the phenogamic flora.
That particular tree was concluded to be an araucaria, a species now found in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea, and in a few other remote situations. The coniferae of this era form the dawn of dicotyledenous trees, of which they may be said to be the simplest type, and to which, it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra are a link from the monocotyledons.
In the fitting up of this planet as the home of mankind it would appear that the Creator regarded the coniferae, or evergreen family, as well worthy of attention; for almost from the first, according to geologists, this family records on the rocky tablets of the earth its appearance, large and varied development, and its adaptation to each change in climate and condition of the globe's surface during the countless ages of preparation.
Carruthers has carefully examined the original specimen in the Botanical Museum, Edinburgh, and thinks it may have been an epiphyte. As to the climate of the Coal, the Ferns and the Coniferae are perhaps the two classes of plants which may be most relied upon as leading us to safe conclusions, as the genera are nearly allied to living types.
The volcanic rocks that overlie the chalk, and some of the strata associated with and interstratified between masses of basalt, contain leaves of dicotyledonous plants, somewhat imperfect, but resembling the beech, oak, and plane, and also some coniferae of the genera pine and Sequoia.
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