212 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
* Fossil wood, fossil leaves, fossil bones, and fossil infu- 
soria; all these things we have long heard about; but M. 
Goeppert,* who being a botanist, naturally seeks for flowers, 
has had the rare good fortune to detect the blossoms of the 
world before the Flood! This is true to the very letter; he 
has gathered him a bouquet of these more than patriarchal 
flowers, he has seen their buds, their corollas, their propaga- 
tion, nay, he has gone near to perceive their perfumes! And 
much more than all this, M. Goeppert has set himself to 
detect the mode in which nature has so wrought as to turn 
these most delicate of all substances into stone: thus per- 
petuating that which a breath of wind is sufficient to destroy, 
and moulding into a geological specimen what a finger's touch 
will fade! So patient, so sagacious is he, that he has caught 
the secret of this mechanism, and thus enables us to discern 
the transformation of the temporal to the eternal, and the 
metamorphosis of what is fragile into what is durable. And 
as if M. Goeppert were afraid that people should say to him 
what Rousseau declared to the chemists: < I will only credit 
the decomposition of the farina when a chemist shall perform 
it before me,’ so has he proceeded from analysis to synthesis ; 
he has actually made fossil plants! This were the man who 
might be expected to enter a drawing-room, wearing a fossil 
rose, like a badge, in his button-hole: and if ever such an 
Order of savans be instituted, M. Goeppert is the person to 
be made its president. 
“ We may easily suppose that all these things can never 
have been effected without hourly labour and repeated toil ; 
much mental harass, and many fruitless efforts. Our Breslau 
Professor has realized the German proverb : ‘ Leaden body 
and head of fire will do wonders. He has almost nailed him- 
self to his chair, and heaping rocks and stones all round him, 
has given free scope to his imagination. The Antiquary of 
the vegetable creation, he has filled both hands with its 
* This gentleman, a Professor in the University of Breslau, is about to 
publish a work at Prague, entitled: ** Les genres des Plantes fossiles, "OH" 
parés avec ceuz du Monde moderne, expliqués par des figures. 
