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Updated: June 5, 2025
The crater of the Peak has so little depth, and the air is renewed with so much facility, that it is scarcely probable the quantity of azote is greater there than on the coasts. We saw on the summit of the Peak no trace of psora, lecidea, or other cryptogamous plants; no insect fluttered in the air.
As if to complete the comparison, I found Alpine lichens growing among cactus and palms, and a crust of Arctic cryptogamous growth covered rocks, between which sprang tropical flowers.
Again, just as the first half of the earth's story is the age of Invertebrate animals, so it is the age of Cryptogamous plants. So far evolution was always justified in the plant record. But there is a third parallel, of much greater interest.
Cryptogamous acrogens: Acrogens: Mosses, equisetums, ferns, lycopodiums Lepidodendra. Dicotyledonous gymnosperms: Gymnogens: Conifers and Cycads. Dicotyledonous Angiosperms: Exogens: Compositae, leguminosae, umbelliferae, cruciferae, heaths, etc. All native European trees except conifers. Monocotyledons: Endogens.
Carruthers has found by careful measurement that the volume of the fossil spores did not exceed that of the recent club-moss, a fact of some geological importance, as it may help to explain the facility with which these seeds may have been transported by the wind, causing the same wide distribution of the species of the fossil forests in Europe and America which we now observe in the geographical distribution of so many living families of cryptogamous plants.
The harsh, perpetual contest with want and lawless rivalry, to which all uncivilized nations are doomed, permits only a few low powers, and those much the same in all, lichens, mosses, rude grasses, and other coarse cryptogamous growths, to develop themselves; since these alone can endure the severities of season and treatment to which all that would clothe the fields of the soul must remain exposed.
Notwithstanding these changes, Brongniart's generalisation concerning this flora still holds true, namely, that the state of the vegetable world was then extremely different from that now prevailing, not only because the cryptogamous plants constituted nearly the whole flora, but also because they were, on the whole, more highly developed than any belonging to the same class now existing, and united some forms of structure now only found separately and in distinct orders.
Azote and phosphorus having been abundantly found in several cryptogamous plants, an appeal to chemistry would be useless to determine whether this organized substance belonged to the animal or vegetable kingdom.
If so, the limitation of this more ancient flora, represented by so many genera and species, to the gymnospermous and cryptogamous orders, and the absence or extreme rarity of plants of higher grade, lead us naturally to speculate on the theory of progressive development, however difficult it may be to avail ourselves of this explanation, so long as we meet with even a few exceptional cases of what may seem to be monocotyledonous or dicotyledonous exogens.
But the fine particles of blown sand which are scattered through it, show that it must have accumulated, subaërially, upon the surface of a soil covered by a forest of cryptogamous plants, probably tree-ferns.
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