EDWAED ALEXANDEK NEWELL AEBER 30t 



South Staffordshire Coalfield (1916). In other journals he dealt with 

 the fossil floras of the Cumberland Coalfield (C^. J. G. S. 190:3), the 

 South Lancashire Coalfield (Man. Mem. 1903), the Kent Coalfield 

 (Q. J. G. S. 1909 and 1914, Geol. Mag. 1912 and Trans. Inst. Min. 

 Eng. 1914. and 1916), the Newent Coalfield (Geol. Mag. 1910), the 

 Yorkshire Coalfield (Proc. Yorks. Geol. Soc. 1910 and Geol. Mag. 

 1912), the Ballycastle Coalfield (Sci. Proc. Roy. Dublin Soc. 1912), 

 the Concealed Oxfordshire Coalfiekl and the S. Staffordshire Coal- 

 lield (Trans. Inst. Min. Eng. 1916). As an example of a paper of 

 less localized interest we may refer to his Kevision of the Seed Im- 

 pressions of the British Coal Measui-es (Ann. Bot. 1914), in which he 

 endeavoured to bring some order into a chaotic subject. Among his 

 studies of non-British Carboniferous plants, may be mentioned his 

 account of Psyf/mophyllum majiis from Newfoundland (Trans. Linn. 

 Soc. 1912). He did not confine his attention, however, to Carboni- 

 ferous floras, but studied the vegetation both of the newer and 

 older rocks. In addition to the work already mentioned on the 

 Mesozoic plants of the Southern Hemisphere, he dealt with Triassic 

 species of Zamites and Pterophylhim (Trans. Linn. Soc. 1907) and 

 Yuccifes (Geol. Mag. 1909). He did relatively little work on 

 Tertiary plants, but in this connexion his description of Cupressi- 

 noxyloii Hoolceri may be mentioned (Geol. Mag. 1904 : see also Life 

 and Letters of Sir J. D. Hooker, ii. 455-6). 



In the latter part of his career Arber turned with enthusiasm to 

 the study of very early floras. In 1915 he desci'ibed some curious 

 plant remains from the Devonian Pocks of N. Devon (with P. H. 

 Goode, Camb. Phil. Soc.). His chief interest during the last year of 

 his life was a general study of Devonian vegetation, from which 

 he drew far-reaching theoretical conclusions ; he has left a memoir 

 on this subject which it is hoped will be eventually completed and 

 published. 



Arber possessed a strong " morphological sense," and his interest 

 in the problems of phylogeny was both stimulated and controlled by 

 his wide and detailed knowledge of the floras of successive epochs. 

 Among his papers on the evolutionary history of plants we may 

 mention his early study on homoeomorphy (Geol. Mag. 1903), and his 

 discussions of the Past History of the Ferns (Ann. Bot. 1906) and 

 the Origin of Gymnosperms (Sci. Prog. 1906). But, from the 

 phylogenetic standpoint, his magnum opus Avas the memoir on the 

 Origin of Angiosperms which he wrote in conjunction with his friend 

 John Parkin (Linn. Soc. Journ. 1907). As is so often the case when 

 a subject has long been brooded over, the working hypothesis deve- 

 loped in this paper sjnang into being at the last, almost at a flash, 

 and the two workers saw that they had at length reached a possible 

 solution of " the riddle of the Origin of AngIos])erms, a problem 

 that" — to quote from one of Newell Arber's leiters of October 1906 — 

 *' we have been hammering at for more than three years. (We have 

 piles of MS. and hea])s of full note books on the subject.) This came 

 quite suddenly^ for all at once we saw the road clear, and nearly all 

 the clouds rolled away. Yet it is difticxdt to say why. I had been 

 reading Wieland's big book on American Fossil Cvcads, and suddenly 



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