FOSSIL PLANTS FOR STUDENTS OF BOTANY AND GEOLOGY. 277 



in Spirogyra.'' It embodies the result of nearly four years' investi- 

 gation, and the author here collects together and amplifies the 

 various short papers on the subject, published by him at intervals 

 during this period. ^^^^ g^ B^^^^^_ 



Fossil Plants for Students of Botany and Geoloqij. By A. C. Seward, 

 M.A., F.G.S., &c. With [111] illustrations. Vol. I. Cam- 

 bridge : at the University Press. 1898. 8vo, pp. xviii, 152. 

 Price 12s. 



The author has undertaken a serious task, which the volume 

 before us shows him to have carried out so far with a remarkable 

 degree of success. The work is not a Fossil Flora on the lines of 

 Schimper's Traite, now nearly thirty years old. It is rather 

 modelled on Schimper and Schenk's PalcBophytology and Count 

 Solms-Laubach's Fossil Botany. Mr. Seward presents his subject 

 from the point of view of a botanist. He brings before the student 

 the principal plant forms which have been detected in the earth's 

 strata, and, after narrating the characters of the existing groups to 

 which they belong or are related, he exhibits, often at considerable 

 length, the points of affinity or of difference in the structure and 

 organization of the recent and the fossil plants. The years that 

 have elapsed since the works we have referred to were published 

 have been years of activity in Palaeo-botany, and Mr. Seward, 

 having utilized the published material, as well as included the 

 results of his own researches, has brought his work up to date. 



In adding some critical remarks, it is not with the view of 

 depreciating the value of Mr. Seward's work, but in the hope that a 

 worker who is likely to add greatly to our knowledge of fossil plants 

 may be induced to lay aside some secondary matters that affect the 

 full value of his work. His language is often somewhat diffuse, 

 and presents repetitions more suited to the lecture-hall than the 

 study. The author cannot fail to rectify this in his second volume 

 if he compresses the remaining groups into less than five hundred 

 pages. Schimper and Schenk require a volume of over nine 

 hundred pages for their exposition of fossil botany, and of these 

 less than one hundred pages are occupied with the plants described 

 by Mr. Seward in his first volume. 



The author should give definite grounds for differing from 

 previous authors whose names and views he sets aside. It is not 

 sufficient, for example, in transferring a plant to the "non-com- 

 mittal term Muscites,'' which Schimper, as distinguished in Bryology 

 as in Palasontology, had placed in Sphagnum, to say " the evidence 

 is hardly strong enough to justify a generic designation which 

 implies identity with a particular recent genus." The use of "non- 

 committal" genera is a favourite device of the author, but where 

 there are reasonable grounds justifying a definite determination it 

 is a retrograde step to remove it, without reasons stated, to a more 

 vague designation. On the other hand, the use of a " committal 

 term" which does not include all the forms known to belong to that 

 committal is very misleading. Schimper supplanted Brougniart's 



