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L. Notices respecti7ig New Books. 



Antediluvian Phytology, illustrated by a collection of the Fossil 

 liemains of Plants 'peculiar to the Coal Formations of Great 

 Britain. By Edmund Tyrell Arlis, F.S.A. & G.S. London, 

 1825. -tto. Introduction xiii. p. : pp. 24 : plates 24. 



PRIOR to the appearance of this publication, we believe, 

 the only English works in which the vegetable remains so 

 abundant in our coal strata, and in many instances so interest- 

 ing to the botanist as well as to the geologist, were attempted 

 to be illustrated with any precision and detail, were Martin's 

 Petrificata Dcrbiensia, and the late Mr. Parkinson's Organic 

 Remains. Some of them had also been described by Mr. 

 Steinliauer, in the American Philosophical Transactions; and 

 a few others in the Transactions of various scientific bodies, 

 in two or three county histories, and in the philosophical jour- 

 nals. The late researches of MM. Schlotheim and Sternlierg, 

 with the memoirs of Professor Martins and of M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart, have given the subject a new and more scientific 

 form than it has hitherto possessed ; though we are somewhat 

 apprehensive that those naturalists have not been sufficiently 

 cautious in their determinations of genera and species, so 

 little of the organization of the plants being in their present 

 state capable of being cori'ectly ascertained. We are not fully 

 satisfied, moreover, with the principles of classification which 

 they have adopted, as they appear to tend to the production 

 of some confusion and anomalies in the established modes of 

 discriminating the subjects of natural history. 



On the whole, however, — as we have just intimated, — the 

 investigation of the fossil remains of vegetables is rising in ac- 

 curacy and usefulness ; and though we might perhaps have 

 wished for a work upon the subject on a scale that would place 

 it within the compass of geological students in general, yet we 

 hail the publication of " Antediluvian Phytology" with plea- 

 sure, as the first work in our language exclusively devoted to 

 this subject. 



In a brief inti-oduction, Mr. Artis explains the motives and 

 circumstances which have led him to the undertaking, and 

 gives an outline of the respective systems of fossil vegetables 

 and their parts, proposed by the natux'alists we have named 

 above ; reserving an outline of a new arrangement, with va- 

 rious observations on the fossil plants of the coal formation, 

 for another volume, or rather part, of his work, which he 

 states to be already in progress. 



The part before us contains twenty-four plates, well en- 

 graved by Weddell, from drawings chiefly by Mr. Curtis, but 



