PALAEOPHYTOLOGY. 



i. 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE subject of palaeophytology admits of very different modes of 

 treatment; the points of view of the geologist are not those of the botanist, 

 and the botanist looks at the remains which have come down to us in 

 the succession of geological formations with different eyes, according as 

 the purpose for which he examines them gives greater prominence to 

 the interests of pure classification or of the geography of plants, of 

 phylogeny or of physiology. On the other hand, a connected account of 

 those results of palaeophytology which are of use to the botanist ought 

 certainly to do justice to all these points of view. But the longer I occupied 

 myself with the subject, the more clearly I perceived that this is at present 

 attended with almost insuperable difficulties, at all events that I was not in 

 a position to grapple successfully with the task. The systematist, whose 

 business it is to submit to constant critical examination the results which 

 the palaeophytologists have been able to establish with regard to extinct 

 plant-types, has no need of exact descriptions of the forms, whose nearest 

 relatives are within his reach at any moment in their living state for the 

 determination of his bearings in every direction ; fossil Angiosperms 

 especially, at least in the form in which they can at present be set before 

 us, have only the very smallest value for his purposes; his interest cul- 

 minates in the remains which we possess from remote epochs in the develop- 

 ment of our globe. On the other hand, it is just with these remains that 

 the student of the geography of plants and of phylogeny can do little 

 or nothing ; he must go backwards step by step from living plants which 

 are exactly known to him in all their parts in order to find firm ground 

 for his investigations ; objects, such as the fossil leaves of oaks and chestnuts, 

 which are matter of indifference to the systematist, are exactly the things 

 which interest him most. 



It is evident that with the advance in knowledge which may be expected 

 the two interests will in the future join hands, when the forms of the vegetable 

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