A YORKSHIRE NATURALIST 203, 



memoir was ordered by the Council to be printed. 

 This memoir contained an outline of my views 

 respecting Brongniart. A second memoir was read 

 in 1871 and published in 1872, and when the sixth 

 memoir was read in 1874 the Royal Society, then 

 presided over by Sir Joseph Hooker, rewarded my 

 heresies by voting to me one of their gold medals. 



In August of 1871, the year in which my memoir 

 on Calamites was published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, the British Association met at Edin- 

 burgh. At that meeting I brought forward the subject 

 of cambiums and secondary woods in Cryptogams, 

 with the result that my views were rejected by 

 every botanist in the room. On my return home I 

 found myself in September and October drawn into 

 a controversy on the same subject in the pages of 

 Nature, where the seriousness of the errors into 

 which I had fallen was demonstrated by my oppo- 

 nents, especially by Professor McNab. But in the 

 number for October 26, the editor wisely closed 

 the discussion, on the ground that I should be 

 allowed to publish my new facts. This was done, 

 and a few years later, I had nowhere a stronger 

 supporter than the same Professor McNab. 



The fight was always the same : Was Brongniart 

 right or wrong, when he uttered his dogma, that if 

 the stem of a fossil plant contained a secondary 

 growth of wood, the product of a cambium layer, it 

 could not possibly belong to the cryptogamic division 

 of the vegetable kingdom ? Three palseo-botanists 



