was fresh water; for rain, instead of returning to the
sea, as formerly, was collected in channels of the earth and became
springs, rivers, and lakes. It was made a receptacle for an advance in
organism, and land plants became a conspicuous part of the new creation.

According to the _Vestiges of Creation_, terrestrial botany began with
classes of comparatively simple forms and structure. In the ranks of the
vegetable kingdom the lowest place is taken by plants of cellular
tissue, and which have no flowers, as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns, and
sea-weeds. Above these stand plants with vascular tissue, bearing
flowers, and of which there are two subdivisions: first, plants having
one seed-lobe, and in which the new matter is added within, of which the
cane and palm are examples; second, plants having two seed lobes, and in
which the new matter is added on the outside under the bark, of which
the pine, elm, oak, and all the British forest trees are examples. Now
the author of the _Vestiges_ states that two-thirds of the plants of
this era belong to the cellular kind, but to this one of his ablest
critics (_Edinburgh Review_ for July) demurs, asserting that the
carboniferous epoch shows a gorgeous _flora_--that the first fruits of
vegetable nature were not rude, ill-fashioned forms, but in magnificence
and complexity of structure equal to any living types, and that the
forest approached the rank and complicated display of a tropical jungle,
where the prevalence of great heat with great moisture, combined with
the fact that the atmosphere contained a greater proportion of the
natural food of plants, must undoubtedly have forcibly stimulated
vegetation, and in quantity and luxuriance of growth, if not fineness of
organization, produced it in rich abundance. The earth, it is likely,
was one vast forest, which would perform a most important part for the
good of its future inhabitants, helping to purge the air of its excess
of carbonic acid, by which the earth's surface would be prepared for its
new occupants.

The animal remains of this era are not numerous in comparison with those
that go before or follow. Contrary to what the author of the _Vestiges_
supposes (p. 111), insects were already buzzing in the air; there were,
however, no crawling reptiles on the ground, and it is a doubtful point
whether birds cheered the ancient forests with their song. But fishes
reached their most perfect organic type. They were the lords of