LiyXEA>" SOCIETY OF LONDON". 35 



does not express any decisive view of his own, beyond his con- 

 viction of Algal affinities. 



This paper was preliminary to a somewhat fuller investigation 

 by Mr. C. A. Barber, but the nature of the organism has never 

 been any further determined. 



Turning to Tertiary plants, a " Note on the Fossil Plants from 

 Reading " derived from tlie Thanet Sands, is most interesting from 

 the emphasis with which the author insists on the worthlessness of 

 conclusions as to affinity drawn from mere impressions of leaves. 

 Though his specimens were good ones, he refused to give even 

 generic names to the plants. He found that all except two were 

 decidedly Dicotyledonous and Exogenous. The other two " from 

 having parallel veins, may be assumed to be Monocotyledonous," 

 but beyond this he would not go. 



Of other speeimens he says : " It would be very easy to produce 

 from an herbarium leaves so similar .... as to deceive the 

 inexperienced into instituting crude affinities." Speaking of the 

 specimens generally Hooker remarks : " Though the leaves pre- 

 served in the Keading beds are all of the very commonest forms 

 in the vegetable kingdom (of Dicotyledonous plants) I do not find 

 that they exactly resemble those of any living English species 

 and indeed, even were the resemblance so close that I could not 

 distinguish them from existing forms, I should not consider myself 

 warranted in drawing any conclusions therefrom." The only 

 inference he permits himself is that there is no objection from 

 the evidence of the plants to the climate having been a temperate 

 one. 



It would be well for our science if the caution shown in this 

 paper by so great a systematist were more often emulated by those 

 who approach the determination of plant-impressions with a more 

 limited equipment of taxonomic knowledge. 



In 1855 Hooker described two " seed-vessels," one (" Carpolitlies 

 ovuJion, Brongn.") fi'om the Eocene Beds of Lcwisham, the other 

 (^^Folliculites minutuhis, Bronn") from the Bovey Tracey Coal. 

 Though very cautious in avoiding any definite determination of these 

 objects, he was inclined to suggest, in each case, an affinity with 

 Ferns, spore-like bodies having been found in the Carpolithes. I 

 am informed by Mr. Clement Reid that the Carpolithes ovulurn is 

 the seed of a Water-lily, while the Folliculites is also a seed and 

 certainly belongs to Stratiotcs. The study of Tertiary seeds, now 

 carried to such perfection by the work of Mr. & Mrs. Keid, was 

 of course in its earliest infancy at the time when Hooker wrote 

 these papers. 



"We have now run rapidly through those memoirs of Hooker's 

 which are specially devoted to the consideration of fossil plants. 

 It remains to notice a few references to the subject scattered 

 through his more general Addresses. 



I well remember the keen interest with which, as a boy, I read 



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