CHAPTER VII. 



FOSSIL BOTANY. 



Authors: Lindley, Hutton, Artis, Witham, Buckland, Sternberg, Presl, 

 Goppert, Cotta, Schlotheim, Brongniart, Mantell's Pictorial Atlas. 



Museums : British Museum, Geological Society, Economic Geology, New- 

 castle, Dudley, Manchester, Leeds, Scarborough, Whitby, Glasgow Col- 

 lections, &c. 



THE science of Fossil Botany is of modern origin. 

 M. Adolphe Brongniart observes, that scarcely any mention 

 of fossil vegetables occurs in ancient writers, and that the 

 few observations of Theophrastus and Pliny are too vague 

 and obscure to be of any value. The silence of Greek and 

 Boman authors ought not to surprise us ; coal, which con- 

 stitutes the great depository of fossil plants, being wanting, 

 or undiscovered, in the regions chiefly inhabited by these 

 nations ; while in Germany, France, and England, where coal 

 is chiefly found, the Eomans were more intent on establish- 

 ing their domination, than in studying the natural resources 

 of those regions ; the extensive woods which then covered so 

 large a portion of the surface, affording a sufficient supply of 

 fuel, without compelling a recourse to those mineral stores 

 afforded by the entombed forests of the primeval earth. 



Coal, however, is mentioned by Theophrastus, Siculus 

 Flaccus, and St. Augustine. It is supposed to have been 

 known also to the Boman occupants of our island, cinders 

 and pieces of coal having been found in Boman roads and 

 walls, and Boman coins discovered in beds of cinders. It 

 is farther conjectured to have been known to the British 

 aborigines, hammer-heads, wedges, and axes of flint, having 

 been found in beds of coal ; while the name of the substance 

 is not Saxon, but British. A people who are known to have 

 wrought veins of tin, lead, and copper, could not have remained 



