So
far evolution was always justified in the plant record. But there
is a third parallel, of much greater interest. We saw that at one
time the evolutionist was puzzled by the clean division of
animals into Invertebrate and Vertebrate, and the sudden
appearance of the backbone in the chronicle: he was just as much
puzzled by the sharp division of our plants into Cryptogams and
Phanerogams, and the sudden appearance of the latter on the earth
during the Coal-forest period. And the issue has been a fresh and
recent triumph for evolution.
Plants are so well preserved in the coal that many years of
microscopic study of the remains, and patient putting-together of
the crushed and scattered fragments, have shown the Carboniferous
plants in quite a new light. Instead of the Coal-forest being a
vast assemblage of Cryptogams, upon which the higher type of the
Phanerogam is going suddenly to descend from the clouds, it is,
to a very great extent, a world of plants that are struggling
upward, along many paths, to the higher level. The characters of
the Cryptogam and Phanerogam are so mixed up in it that, although
the special lines of development are difficult to trace, it is
one massive testimony to the evolution of the higher from the
lower.
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