Abstract
II. THE direction and many of the gradations through which the highest classes of the vegetable kingdom have been developed from the lower are preserved in the palæontological record. In order to decipher them, however, certain facts must be kept in view: chiefly, that the higher and more complex organisations, are the most susceptible to changes in the external conditions upon which they are dependent, and therefore more readily destroyed, while the simpler the organisation the more yielding or plastic it is, and the greater the chance that it will be able to survive by adapting itself to change. Thus the superb Cryptogams of the Carboniferous succumbed no doubt to great physical changes, but the more humble of them bent to the new conditions, and even found abundant in the Trias and Secondary rocks, and to be analogous, or perhaps identical, with the existing Cymo-polia and Acetabularia. It is unfortunate that, owing to the texture of most of the Algæ, observation has to be concentrated on the few groups that could be preserved. In the Silurian the remains of these are numerous, and of forms completely differing from existing types.
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References
"L'Evolution du Règne Végétatale". Les Cryptogames. Par M. M. Saporta et Marion . Bibliothèque Scientifique Internationale, xxxi. (1881).
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GARDNER, J. The Evolution of the Cryptogams 1 . Nature 24, 558–562 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024558a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024558a0