206 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



B. Walton, Muscatine, Iowa ; Mrs. Dwiglit Merriman, Jackson, 

 Mich. 



The Corresponding Secretary presented a letter from Mr. S. A. 

 Miller, acknowledging his election as a corresponding member, 

 and containing the following note : 



On the Growth of Paleontology as a Science. 



BY S. A. MILLER. 



In 1818, the Rev. Mr. Steinhaur, an educated botanist, described spe- 

 cies of Sigillaria, Stigmaria, Leindodendron, etc., in the Trans. Am. 

 Phil. Soc. under the older generic name Phytolitlius, where others placed 

 fucoids. Very slovvly the flora of the Coal Measures was separated into 

 genera and species, but these plants continued to be the oldest known 

 for many years. About twenty years ago, Prof. Dawson astounded the 

 scientific world, by his discovery of land plants, in rocks of Devonian 

 age, and, in 1859, he made the first announcement of the existence of land 

 plants as low as the Upper Silurian. His Psilophyton remained solitary 

 and alone the only representative of land vegetation from the Upper Si- 

 lurian rocks, until within the past year. jSTow we are met with the state- 

 ment, that plants have been found in the Niagara Group as large and 

 well marked as the Lejndodendron from the Coal Measures,* and Prof. 

 Lesquereux has described several forms from the Lower Helderberg 

 Group more highly organized than Dawson's Psilophyton. Nor do our 

 palaeo-botanists stop here, for my learned and esteemed friend. Prof. 

 Lesquereux, has come down to the base of the Cincinnati Group, which 

 is the equivalent of the Trenton, and^described as land plants Psilophy- 

 ton gracillimum and Sphenophyllum primcevum, and from the upper part 

 of the Cincinnati Group, he has described the Protostigma sigillarioides-f 

 Is is only proper, however, to say, that I believe his Psilophyton gracilli- 

 mum cannot be separated by generic differences from Graptolithus 

 abnormis found as low as the Quebec Group, and that it is yet a 

 matter of some doubt, whether Sphenophyllum primmvum is the recent 

 work of an insect or a graptolite of the genus Oldhamia, while Prof. 

 Newberry is positive that his Protostigma sigillarioides is a fucoid, with- 

 out any characterresembling a land plant. These differences of opinion 

 between the doctors, however, will fade away in the light of future dis- 



overies, leaving the truth to stand as part of the science, like all our 

 well established facts in natural history, more strongly supported by rea- 

 son of the contention. 



Cincinnati, January 8th, 1878. 



*Since published in the April number of the American Journal of Science and Arts, under 

 the name of GlyiHodendron eaionense. 



•f-Read before the American Philosophical Society in Octoljer, 1877, and published in its Pro- 

 ceedings. 



