early ocean; and next the temperature of the earth is conjectured to
have been higher, and perhaps almost uniform throughout. The higher
temperature of the primeval times is attributed to the greater proximity
or intensity of the globe's internal heat, and which, poured through
cracks and fissures of the lately concreted crust, M. BRONGNIART
supposes to have been sufficiently great to overpower the ordinary
meteorological influences and spread a tropical climate all over its
surface.

It must be further borne in mind that as yet no _land animals or
plants_ existed, and for this presumable reason, that dry land had not
appeared. It is only in the next or carboniferous formation that
evidence is traced of island or continent. As a consequence of this
emergence there 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