82 M. De Candolle on Fossil Vegetables. 



the subject ; and since that time, and more especially during 

 the last ten years, a vast number of treatises have appeared. 



In 1804, M. de Schlotheim * published some engravings, 

 which were much more accurate than any which previously ap- 

 peared ; with more minute details and comparisons with the 

 existing species, which were often very happy. The naming of 

 the plants which he described was, however, a great desideratum. 



In 1830, the publications of M. le Comte Sternbergf began 

 to appear, and they constitute an epoch in this part of the science. 

 From that period a great number of works and memoirs, which 

 are principally to be found in the transactions of various 

 societies, have every year supplied additional information. A 

 great number of coal-mines have been examined with an espe- 

 cial relation to fossils, especially in France, Germany, England, 

 Sweden,^ and America,§ a circumstance which enables us to 

 institute interesting comparisons between conlemporaneous vege- 

 tations which were widely separated. 



The documents supplied by many scientific men, had thus 

 accumulated in different works, when M. Ad. Brongniart 

 undertook the task of reviewing and comparing them in 

 his Prodrome d'une histoire des vegetaux Jhssiles-W In it he 

 has collected, with the most scrupulous care, all the known facts ; 

 and, with much clearness of compilation and elegant simplicity 

 of style, has drawn the attention of scientific men to the im- 

 portant consequences which result from the study of fossil vege- 

 tables. He considers them first in a botanical, and then in a 

 geological point of view. In the former part, he points out 

 how we are to compare fossil vegetables with the plants that are 

 now existing, and how they had best be named and classified ; 

 he then takes a survey of all the families, the genera, and species 

 which were known at the time, and mentions their geognostical 



" Beschreibung Merkiviirdiger Krauterabdrucke and Pflanzenversteinerungen. 

 Gotha. 1804. 



+ Versuch einer geogivstisch-hotanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorwell. 

 4 fasc. in fol. Leipzig, 1820-26. A work which has been translated into 

 French by M. le Comte de Braj'. 



t NUson. Mem.de P Aaid. des Sc. de Stockholm, 1820 and 1824. 



§ Memoir of Mr Steinhauer in the Transactions of the American Phil. 

 Soc. vol. i. 



II 8vo. Paris, 1828. 



