162 HISTOET OF FOSSIL BOTANY. 



ignorant of a substance which often lies so much nearer 

 the surface than these minerals, and fragments of coal are 

 constantly washed out of its native beds, and borne into 

 the plains by rivulets and streams. There is historical 

 evidence of its having been known and employed in the 

 ninth century, during the occupation of the Saxons ; it is 

 also mentioned shortly after the Norman Conquest. JEneas 

 Sylvius, who visited this island about the middle of the 

 fifteenth century, and afterwards became Pope Pius II., in a 

 well-known passage, mentions, with evident surprise, that he 

 saw in Scotland poor people in rags begging at the churches, 

 and receiving for alms pieces of stone, with which they went 

 away contented. "This species of stone," he observes, 

 " whether with sulphur, or whatever inflammable substance 

 it may be impregnated, they burn in place of wood, of which 

 their country is destitute." 



The study of fossil botany commenced with the general 

 working of coal, and though the same erroneous ideas pre- 

 vailed with reference to vegetable, as to animal fossils ; yet 

 the clearness and distinctness of their forms showed that they 

 were actual plants ; while the evidence of drift which they 

 exhibited, occasioned them to be ascribed to the action of the 

 deluge. It was not, however, till about the commencement 

 of the last century that the researches and the publications 

 of La Hire, and in particular of Scheuchzer, on the con- 

 tinent, and of Lloyd and Lister, in our own country, drew 

 the attention of the scientific world to this remarkable 

 department of natural science. At a later date, the writings 

 of Leibnitz, "Wolkmann, Mylius, Maraldi, and Jussieu, not 

 only proved the general distribution of these fossils over a 

 great part of Europe, but the Memoir of Jussieu, published 

 in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences, in 1708, is 

 eulogised by M. Brongniart, as a work truly remarkable for 

 its epoch ; since it possesses the distinguished merit of 

 establishing the dissimilarity which exists between the 

 plants of the coal, and the existing vegetation of those 

 portions of Europe in which they are now found, and their 

 analogy with species peculiar to warmer regions at the 

 present day. 



As earlier observers had been sceptical as to the vegetable 

 origin of these fossils, later inquirers went to the opposite 



