-•no 

 Lesquereux.) nv70 [Jait. 5, 



Let me now answer tlie ques!ii)ns wliich the above exposition may have 

 suggested. What is the purpose of this work? What are the results 

 already obtained from the researches? What may be expected of its com- 

 pletion? A constantly more intimate accpiaintance with the characters of 

 the coal Hora is the first and natural result of prolonj^ed and extensive 

 cxp'orations. This will not say, however, that we shall have by this a 

 full hjstor}' of the vegetation of the coal. For, as it has been remarked in 

 the beginning of this papiT, the fossil vegetable remains of the coal are 

 generally mere fiagments, which, considered separately, do not show the 

 characters of the whole plants to which they pertain These can be 

 recognized only by the comparison, sometimes of a large number of speci- 

 mens ; and it may even be said that many of tlie species of the coal are 

 without any scieutific value, for the reas.Mi that they are defined by charac- 

 ters which belong to mere fragments. And the deficiency of reliable 

 specific characters ai)ply not only to the coal plants themselves, but be- 

 come more evident still in the attempts made to fix their relation to the 

 plants of our time. 



The insufficienc}' of the evidence afforded to the student by those mere 

 fragments of vegetables has been complained of by the most sagacious 

 paleontologists, and has discouraged the most ardent followers of Paleo- 

 botany. Lindley and Hutton bitterl^y lament it in their fossil flora of 

 Great Britain, which, however incomplete it may be, has become a classic 

 or leading work, and is now re-edited in its integrity. Hooker, the prince 

 of the botanists of our ago, while connected with the Geological Survey 

 of England, makes, in his report, a comparison of the vegetation of the coal 

 with that of our time, and devotes the largest part of it to exemplify by 

 figures and descriptions how rarely fragments of ferns may represent the 

 characters of the species to which thej' belong, lie has, however, in the 

 exposi ion of the structure of the St'ginaria and of Lepidostrobi, the fruits 

 of Lepid >dendron, anatomically studied from silicified specimens, thrown 

 such light on the affinity of those plants, that his too short memoir is 

 considered as the most important on the subject. Br.)ngniart, also a prince 

 among the botanists of his time, spent many years in exploring the 

 coal measures of France and Belgium, in visiting all the museums where 

 specimens of fossil vegetables were preserved, before he began, in 1828, 

 the prei)aration of his great work on the fossil flora of the coal. Adding 

 to bis stock of materials by exchanges and by communications received 

 from the scientific world at large, he pursued his labors until 1844, when he 

 abandoned the work half done. His Flora is, however, even now the most 

 reliable guide to the student of Paleobotany. Goi)i)ert, too, supposing that 

 from the immense number of specimens of coal plants gathered into his 

 splendid cabinet he should be able to fix a new classification of the ferns of 

 the coal from the characters of their fructifications, began his Genera 

 (0(yt()i.nr/en) in 1841, and abandoned it, discouraged, after six fascicules had 

 been published. This work, however, incomplete as it is, has, by the 

 exempliticalion of the structure of a number of forms of the fructifications 



