244 WILLIAM CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON 



Northumberland. As Henry Silvertop he came in for the 

 Lartington property. He was born in 1779 and married Miss 

 Eliza Witham, niece and co-heiress of William Witham of Cliffe, 

 Yorkshire, when he took the name and arms of Witham. 



The method of cutting thin sections of rocks and fossils 

 had just been invented by Nicol, and this gave Witham the 

 opportunity for his investigations. His papers are illustrated 

 by the botanist McGillivray, to whom he may have owed some 

 further assistance. Indeed he made little pretension to botanical 

 knowledge, but the opinions which he expresses strike one as 

 remarkably sensible, and he must have been a man of sound 

 judgment, at least in scientific affairs. 



Witham was the first investigator of that most famous of 

 fossils, Lepidodendron Harcozirtii; of the Craigleith tree (now 

 Pitys Witkami), of the Lennel Braes trees (Pitys antiqua and 

 P. primaevd}, of the Wideopen tree (Pinites, now Cordaites 

 Brandlingi) and of Anabathra pulcherrima. It is curious to 

 notice that the Craigleith tree, a manifest Gymnosperm, was at 

 first (1829) regarded even by the great Brongniart as a Mono- 

 cotyledon, while others imagined it to be a Lycopod. Witham, 

 however, soon set this right. He always speaks with great 

 respect of Brongniart, then just becoming the recognised leader 

 of fossil botany. The following passage from Witham's memoir 

 on the vegetable fossils found at Lennel Braes, near Coldstream, 

 is of interest. 



"Now, according to that gentleman's [Brongniart's] opinion, 

 out of six classes. . .only two existed at that period [Carboniferous], 

 namely the Vascular Cryptogamic plants, comprehending the 

 Filices, Equisetaceae and Lycopodeae, and the Monocotyledons, 

 containing a small number of plants which appear to resemble 

 the Palms and arborescent Liliaceae. The existence, therefore, 

 of so extensive a deposit of Dicotyledonous plants, at this early 

 period of the earth's vegetation, appears to demand the attention 

 of the naturalist." 



Brongniart's " Monocotyledons " were no doubt Cordaiteae. 

 Witham, we see, set the great man right as regards the antiquity 

 of Dicotyledons, in which, of course, Gymnosperms were then 

 included. 



