476 Bibliographical Notice. 



slices of both fossil and recent specimens, sound knowledge 

 accumulated from many sources. Under these circumstances both 

 botanist and geologist were interested in the research ; and one 

 result arrived at was that the fossil plants, in many instances, could 

 not be closely classified with those now known to be living, and 

 were therefore assorted into other typical species and groups, with 

 distinctive names. This was especially the case with several kinds 

 of trees found fossil in the Coal-measures. Among British and 

 foreign palaeobotanists the late W. C. Williamson stands pre- 

 eminent in his bold and successful exposition of the structural cha- 

 racters and biological affinities of these Carboniferous plant-remains. 

 As a life-long geologist and experienced professor of botany 

 Dr. "Williamson combined all the requirements of a palseobotanist. 

 There are others working on the same lines, and one of the most 

 promising, and, indeed, successful, among them is the author of the 

 book under notice. 



In Part I. there are six chapters treating generally of the 

 historical and geological aspects of the subject. Chapter I. sketches 

 the ideas of the older observers, and the successful results of modern 

 research. In Chapter II. the author considers the mutual bearings 

 of botany and geology in a philosophic spirit, carefully and compre- 

 hensively, with the earnestness of personal knowledge. Chapter III. 

 takes up the geological history, or broad features of the successive 

 stages in the building of the earth's crust, and gives a condensed 

 but clear account of the natural origin of conglomerates, sandstones, 

 shales, and limestones, also of the superposition of strata with or 

 without successional organic remains ; there are also allusions to 

 rock-foldings and dislocations, to metamorphism and igneous rocks. 

 After a careful and suggestive " Table of Strata," the different 

 formations are successively taken in hand, and their main charac- 

 teristics briefly described (pp. 32-53). The continuous evolution 

 of the earth's constitution is insisted on as proved by the details of 

 its history. Chapter IV. (pp. 54-92) gives an excellent account of 

 the preservation of plants as fossils under very different circum- 

 stances and in manifold conditions. First on surface-soils, both 

 now-a-days and in far-past ages ; for the frontispiece illustrates the 

 stumps of a forest of Carboniferous age, now exposed near Glasgow, 

 and the analogous fig. 5 (occupying page 59) shows the relics of a 

 submerged forest of recent date on the coast of Cheshire. The 

 local accumulation of plant-remains of all sorts and sizes in the 

 great rivers of India, America, and Western Africa illustrates the 

 origin of vast quantities of vegetable remains, often of different 

 characters, in some strata. The peculiar local association of 

 plants and animals, of various families and orders, both aquatic and 

 terrestrial, in the Bowera Creek (p. 66) is, of course, noticed as an 

 important example to be studied by palseobotanists. The con- 

 ditions in which fossil plants occur, whether more or less altered 

 and imperfect, and their stony or mineral constituents, their relative 

 positions, and modes of imbedment, are next studied in considerable 

 detail. Chapter V. treats of the difficulties and the sources of error 



