PART IV. 



FOSSIL BOTANY. 



1170. THE history of vegetation could not be considered complete, 

 unless we endeavoured to give some account, however brief, of the plants 

 which existed on the earth in its primeval state, during the extended 

 geological epochs which elapsed before the establishment of the present 

 order of things. This subject is alike interesting to the botanist and the 

 geologist. It has sometimes been called Geo-Botany, and is an impor- 

 tant section of Oryctology (ogt/xroVi fossil). Geology, says Philips, 

 " would never, perhaps, have escaped from the domain of empiricism 

 and conjecture, but for the innumerable testimonies of elapsed periods 

 and perished creations, which the stratified rocks of the globe present, 

 in the remains of ancient plants and animals. So many important 

 questions concerning their nature, circumstances of existence, and mode 

 of inhumation in the rocks, have been suggested by these interesting 

 reliquiae ; and the natural sciences have received so powerful an im- 

 pulse, and been directed with such great success to the solution of 

 problems concerning the past history of the earth, that we scarcely 

 feel disposed to dissent from the opinion, that without fossil Zoology 

 and Botany, or what is denominated Paleontology (vu^otios, ancient), 

 there would have been no true Geology." The stratified crust of the 

 globe is full of these monuments of vanished forms of life. They are 

 of various kinds, are in different states of preservation, and occur very 

 unequally in rocks of different kinds and ages. The remains of ancient 

 vegetation are very abundant in the coal measures, the important com- 

 bustible material derived from them, and which is vegetable matter in 

 an altered form. 



1171. Characters and arrangement of Fogil Plants. From the 



state in which fossil plants are found, it is by no means an easy 

 matter to determine their nature accurately. It is rarely that 

 any of the essential organs are found in such a state of preserva- 



