162 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Mar. 27 
theme was felt, for in describing so simple a thing as a fossil 
leaf, or shell, or fish-scale, he was reverent, as one dealing with 
the record of the earth’s organic history. He made a scientific 
use of the imagination, and having in his mind, he reproduced 
to his audience, a picture of the geological conditions or phe- 
nomena he was describing. 
In Patronrotoay—Dr, Newberry’s most elaborate work, and 
on which his fame will more firmly rest, is that in paleontology. 
The study of coal-plants was one of his earliest pastimes, and 
during his medical course in Paris he improved his opportuni- 
ties for enlarging his acquaintance with the science. If he had 
made a specialty of vegetable paleontology he could have become 
the foremost authority of his time. Forty-three titles of his 
papers belong to paleobotany, five of them dated as early as 
1853. In 1884 he was made a paleontologist of the United 
States Geological Survey, and published, in 1888, Monograph 
XIV, on the “Fossil Fishes and Fossil Plants of the Triassic 
Rocks of New Jersey and the Connecticut Valley.’’ Two 
unpublished monographs, “The Flora of the Amboy Clays” and 
“The Later Extinct Flora of North America,” will appear as 
posthumous works under the editorship of his pupil and 
friend, Arthur Hollick. 
Following is a critical estimate of Dr. Newberry’s work in 
paleobotany by a present worker in that field : 
‘‘ Dr. Newberry was a great geologist, without which qualifi- 
cation no one can appreciate the full significance of fossil plants. 
He never spoke of them without evincing a lively consciousness 
that they were once real and living plants, and that they 
belonged to the great record which time has made of the events 
which have transpired in the history of the earth. It was this 
constant realization of the objective truth which geology unfolds, 
a state of mind apparently wanting in the majority of geologists 
and paleontologists, that gave Dr. Newberry’s utterances their 
chief weight, as well as their peculiar charm. 
‘*Dr. Newberry was not a good botanist. He had once been, 
but had neglected to keep pace with the science. Moreover, 
he seemed to have very little interest in the more important 
principles of botany. He was utterly indifferent to questions 
of classification, and to judge from his published papers one 
order of arrangement was as good for him as another. This 
was not from lack of knowledge, except so far as indifference 
checked the effort to know, and he was not wholly indifferent to 
the order of development of plant life, as his article on Fossil 
Botany in Johnson’s Cyclopedia shows, although at the time 
that was written the true order had not yet been established as 
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