FOSSIL PLANTS. 



DURING the last two or three decades, the study of 

 fossil plants has been gradually tending towards 

 the point at which its importance is acknowledged by 

 botanists and geologists. Even now there are many 

 botanists who have little faith in the possibilities of paleo- 

 botany as an aid to the elucidation of important botanical 

 problems ; and among geologists it is the rule to attach 

 extremely little weight to the evidence of fossil plants in 

 stratigraphical questions. This scant recognition of the 

 value of such a science is easily understood if we consider 

 the nature of the materials with which a palseobotanist 

 has to deal. The field geologist is familiar with the forms 

 in which plant fragments most commonly occur in stratified 

 deposits, and, at the same time, he is aware of the rashness 

 not infrequently displayed in the determination of species 

 from the most imperfect data. 



It is true that fossil plants cannot compare with lossil 

 animals as indices of geologic age in the majority of cases ; 

 this is partly because the sedimentary strata of the earth's 

 crust are usually richer in marine than land organisms, and 

 in part because the skeletons of animals are obviously more 

 likely to occur as useful records than the imperfect frag- 

 ments of land vegetation. There are those strata, however, 

 in which the fossils are largely or almost entirely of a 

 plant nature. In the hands of specialists such fossils may 

 be used with a considerable measure of success in com- 

 parative stratigraphy. 



No one has displayed a greater zeal in combating the 

 practice of building up specific diagnoses on the merest 

 fragments of badly preserved plants than Prof. Williamson. 

 We recognise the worthlessness of many such determina- 

 tions, and appreciate the dangers frequently involved in 

 assigning generic and specific names to fossil plants ; but 

 we can still point to striking instances of the utility of such 



