See Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen in
den Arbeiten der Schles. Gesellschaft, fur waterl. Cultur im Jahr' 1843, s.
33, 37, 40 and 50). A Cycadea (Pterophyllum gonorchachis, Gopp.) has also
been found in the carboniferous formations in Upper Silesia, at Konigshutte.
[footnote] ***Lindley, 'Fossil Flora', No. xv., p. 163.
Asterophyllites, having whorl-like leaves, and allied to the Naiades, with
araucaria-like Coniferae',* which exhibit faint traces of annual rings.
[footnote] *'Fossil Coniferae', in Buckland's 'Geology', p. 483-490.
Witham has the great merit of having first recognized the existence of
Coniferae in the early vegetation of the old carboniferous formation.
Almost all the trunks of trees found in this formation were previously
regarded as palms. The species of the genus 'Araucaria' are, however, not
peculiar to the coal formations of the British Islands; they likewise occur
in Upper Silesia.
This difference of character from our present vegtation, minifested in the
vegetative forms which were so luxuriously developed on the drier
p 280
and more elevated portions of the old red sandstone, was maintained through
all the subsequent epochs to the most recent chalk formations; amid the
peculiar characteristics exhibited in the vegetable forms contained in the
coal measures, there is, however, a strikingly-marked prevalence of the same
families, if not of the same species,* in all parts of the earth as it then
existed, as in New Holland, Canada, Greenland, and Melville Island.
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