Xesquereux.] 198 [March. 



tion to illustrate it ; and also respecting the character of the 

 Millstone Grit or Subcarboniferous Conglomerate in the Far 

 West. Of the first he says : 



If it is finished according to my original plan, it should have at 

 least one hundred and fifty plates. There is no fossil flora of the 

 coal; that is, there is no work on the subject, where one can find 

 figured and described all the species of any coal-field. All has been 

 made by fragments, Brogniart's fossil flora is not half finished, and 

 will not be continued. Lindley and Ilutton have published plants 

 of all the palaeozoic rocks of England, but all is mixed there, and no 

 part is complete. Gijppert has all his published fossil plants dis- 

 seminated through a number of books, of which no one contains a 

 complete series. Now, for the fossil flora of our coal-measures, I 

 would like to publish drawings and descriptions of all the species, 

 even if these species are already known and published from the coal 

 of Europe ; for a double purpose : firstly, in order to enable the 

 student to proceed in the study of our fossil plants without the cost 

 and incumbrance of a large library, which is now impossible ; and 

 secondly, to show from the beginning of the vegetation of our earth, 

 the remarkable similitude of American with European types, always 

 broken by characters of dissimilarity as diSicult to appreciate now, as 

 they were at the epoch of the coal. ... It is an entirely American 

 and original work. . . . You well know that everything has been, so 

 to say, put in my hand for such a work. After the Pennsylvania 

 survey, I have had those of Kentucky, of Arkansas, of Illinois, In- 

 diana, Ohio ; this last on my own cost. All the best collections of 

 fossil plants of the United States have been sent to me for examina- 

 tion and classification, and thus I have seen an immense number of 

 specimens, without counting those which I have collected myself. 

 Would it not be wrong to abandon and lose the result of a work of 

 so many years, and the advantage of so fine an opportunity for study, 

 and leave the work unfinished, merely because I do not know how or 

 when it can be published ? I will go through if I can, or as long 

 as I can, and if the work is good, it will come out in some way, even 

 if I am not more of this world. . . . 



I do not send you now the plates of the fossil plants of the Ter- 

 tiary, ten in number. . . . All the Tertiary fossil plants that I 

 have had under my examination, those of Mississippi, of Ken- 

 tucky, and of Vancouver's Island, would make about fifteen 

 plates. . . . Some questions of true scientific importance might 



