1S77.] iJJt) [Lesqiiorcur. 



to 1828, Granger, Cist and Professor SiUinian sent a number of specimens 

 to Brongniart, wlio was then engaged in tlie publication of his great work 

 upon the flora of the coal. In 1831, Professor Eaton described with figures 

 a fossil scale tree, (Lepido:le)idron\ sent to him from Montrose, in Bradford 

 County, Pennsylvania.* In 1833, the same author remarks that Professor 

 James Hall had made in Pennsylvania the most extensive collection of 

 vegetable fossils that had hitherto been made on this continent, and gives 

 the names of six species which had been determined by the aid of Brong- 

 niart's figures and descriptions, adding that he had before him twenty-five 

 ascertained species from the coal measures of Penns3^1vania. Already in 

 1831 the description of Facoides Brongniarti was published by Harlan, who 

 had discovered it and mentioned it before as F. AUejhaniensls. This species 

 was later redescribed by Hall in Pal. of New York, as F. Harlaiii, and later 

 still Goppert, in his Flora of the Transition measures, rendered a just tribute 

 of homage both to Harlan and to Hall in describing it anew as Harlania 

 Ilallii. I find in the same historical record of Professor Lesley, mention of 

 a splendid collection of coal plants made at great expense and presented 

 to the Geological Society of Pennsylvania by Dr. Martin. This collection, 

 it seems, has been lost. Then, of a plate of fossil plants of the New Red of 

 Virginia, by Mr. F. G. Clemson; farther on, a paper by Harlan on coal plants, 

 four species of which are figured ; and later still, some remarks fiom the 

 same naturalist upon a species of Equ'settun. referrable to Asterophyllifes or 

 Annularla. To this I may add the record of a mem )ir published in 1887 

 by Dr. Hildreth, in Silliman's Journal, where this able geologist and noble 

 man has figured a number of coal plants, mostly undescribed and without 

 names,, some of them of indefinite relationships ; and of another memoir 

 published in 1847 by Dr. Teschraacher of Boston, who mentions twenty- 

 three species of coal plants from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, some of 

 them figured, and more or less distinctly referrable to species known from 

 the works of European authors. For, at that time, the coal flora of Europe 

 had been already studied with great activity, and besides the works of the 

 older authors, Schlottheim, Artis, LindleyandHutton, Sternberg, which have 

 lost nothing of their scientific value even to our time, the paleobolanists of 

 America had for points of comparison of their fossil plants the Flora of 

 Brongniart, and his numerous memoirs on coal plants published from 1831 

 to 1844 ; a pamphlet of Berger oa the fruits of the coal ; Corda's Beitrage, 

 a splendid work on the internal structure of fossil trunks and stems ; Ger- 

 mar's work on the fossils of the carboniferous of Wettin ; Goppert's Systema, 

 1836 ; and later, his genera (Gattungen), published from 1841-48 ; Gutbier ; 

 Unger on the Calamites ; and less important memoirs of authors, Binuey, 

 Geinitz, Schimper, Roemer, etc., who have now become far-famed by no- 

 table works on the vegetable paleontology of the coal. 



From this rapid synopsis it may be seen how little was known of the car- 

 boniferous flora of North America when, in 1851, I was called to join the 



*I quote this and tlie following data from Professor J. P. I.iesley's historical 

 sketches, as I have had no access to the mentioned memoirs. 



