importance is material of the Brandon Lignite, Vermont, col- 

 lected in several expeditions during the period 1947-1977 by 



dents Alfred Traverse. William 



man 



The coal collections at Harvard are appropriately maintained 

 as part of the Paleobotanical Collections. The basis for this 

 collection is a large suite of materials acquired by E.C. Jeffrey, 

 whose innovations in coal petrology led to an increased under- 

 standing of the origin of coal (Jeffrey, 1925). Knowledge of the 

 origin and constitution of coal and related sediments is funda- 

 mental to coal utilization in technology. The petrographically 

 determined botanical composition of coal is closely related to its 

 coking properties and gasification behavior. Although coal 

 science per se is not now part of research activities in the 

 Paleobotanical Laboratories, the collections at Harvard have 



f 



grad 



become leaders in coal research. The Jeffrey collections have 

 been supplemented through the years, especially by the addition 

 of specimens collected by Barghoorn. Today, the collections 

 include several thousand samples, thin sections, and macera- 

 tions, representing most of the major coal basins of the world. 



THE PRECAMBRIAN COLLECTIONS 



For the past thirty years, the Paleobotanical Laboratories 

 have been closely identified with research on the early evolution 

 of life, and because of this, the Precambrian paleontological col- 

 lections have achieved a size and importance that justifies their 

 discussion in a separate section. 



The earliest acquisition of Precambrian materials by the 

 Botanical Museum was in 1937, when a collection of fossil cal- 

 careous algae, stromatolites, and pisolites was purchased from 

 C.L. and M.A. Fenton. Although much of this material is 

 Phanerozoic in age, some of the stromatolites come from the 

 Middle Proterozoic Belt Supergroup in Montana. These and all 

 other presumed Precambrian fossils were at the time considered 



17 



