However remote may have been the time when these Prototypes of the family of Cycadeæ ceased to exist, the fact of their containing so many combinations of peculiarities identical with those of existing Cycadeæ, connects these ancient arrangements in the Physiology of fossil Botany, with those which now characterize one of the most remarkable families among existing plants. In virtue of these peculiar structures, the living Cycadeæ form an important link, which no other Tribe of plants supplies, connecting the great family of Coniferæ, with the families of Palms and Ferns, and thus fill up a blank, which would otherwise have separated these three great natural divisions of dicotyledonous, monocotyledonous, and acotyledonous plants.
The full development of this link in the Secondary periods of Geological history, affords an important evidence of the Uniformity of Design which now pervades, and ever has pervaded, all the laws of vegetable life.
Facts like these are inestimably precious to the Natural Theologian; for they identify, as it were, the Artificer, by details of manipulation throughout his work. They appeal to the Physiologist, in language more commanding than human Eloquence; the voice of very stocks and stones, that have been buried for countless ages in the deep recesses of the earth, proclaiming the universal agency of One all-directing, all-sustaining Creator, in whose Will and Power, these harmonious systems originated, and by whose Universal Providence, they are, and have at all times been, maintained.
Fossil Pandaneæ.
The Pandaneæ, or Screw-Pines, form a monocotyledonous family which now grows only in the warmer zones, and chiefly within the influence of the sea; they abound in the Indian Archipelago, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Their aspect is that of gigantic Pine apple plants having arborescent stems. (See Pl. 63, Fig. 1.)
