134 Morphology BOOK i 



papers from the pens of Brongniart and Goeppert, and the 

 memoirs of Binney and of Carruthers on the Calamariae 

 were the most noteworthy. 



Towards the end of this decade two men appeared who 

 brought about a total change in the position of the study 

 and who revived its palmiest days, giving it, indeed, a 

 prominence and importance which it could not claim even 

 when Brongniart was at his best. These were Williamson 

 in England, and Renault in France. 



It is hardly too much to say that Williamson founded 

 modern palaeobotany, particularly the section that dealt 

 with the flora of the Coal-measures. His first memoir 

 appeared in 1868, in the form of a description of the woody- 

 zone of a specimen of a Calamite then new to science. 

 From that time onward till 1893, no fewer than nineteen 

 papers, of the highest importance, were published from his 

 pen by the Royal Society of London. In them we find 

 a masterly treatment of the most important types of the 

 Carboniferous period. It was, perhaps, in connexion with 

 the Lepidodendron group that he did his greatest work, 

 but he carried out noteworthy researches on the Spheno- 

 phylleae, being the first to describe a fructification ex- 

 hibiting anatomical structure. He also described the 

 fructifications of the Calamariae and of the Lepidoden- 

 dreae. A further important memoir was one dealing 

 with Lyginodendron, which had been previously discovered 

 by Binney and referred by him to Dadoxylon. 



The feature of perhaps the greatest interest of the life 

 of Williamson during these years was the claim which he 

 advanced, based upon the study of the fossils, that 

 secondary thickening of the trunks of trees is not exclusively 

 a mark of the Phanerogamic type. The controversy between 

 him and the French school, headed by Renault, was acute 

 upon this point. Brongniart had divided the Calamarian 

 plants into two classes, according as they showed or did 



