Sept. 8, 1887] 



NA TURE 



451 



I The Lamellibranchiata cry for help at present in vain, and we 

 gret more than ever the loss of Stoliczska, who promised such 

 ►od wori< had his life been spared. 

 The Brachiopoda, so long and so well cared for by Dr. David- 

 n, now also demand a successor to that illustrious name. 



The Polyzoa, which suffered so severe a loss in the death of 

 Mr. Busk, have since been well cared for by Mr. Arthur W. 

 ""laters and Mr, Vine. 



_^ Until quite lately, the oldest fossil insects known were the 

 sTx fragments of wings of Neuroptera, from the Devonian of 

 New Brunswick, obtained by Mr. C. F. Hartt and described 

 by Mr. S. H. Scudder. More lately the wing of a cockroach 

 has been obtained from rocks of Silurian age in Calvados, 

 France ; whilst almost simultaneously fossil scorpions have been 

 met with by Dr. Hunter, of Carluke, in the Upper Silurian 

 of Lanark, and determined by Mr. B. N. Peach, and from the 

 Upper Silurian of Gotland, described by Dr. Lindstrom. 



These discoveries carry back our records of old land surfaces 

 to a far more remote period than that of the Coal-measures, vast 

 as its distance is removed from recent times. 



Mr. B. N. Peach is the discover of several scorpions, and I 

 have also recently figured and described three new forms of 

 cockroach and several spined myriapods from the Coal-measures. 

 Another cockroach, also new, which has been kindly sent me for 

 study by Mr. Peach, brings to our knowledge a larval stage of 



■atta from the Scottish Carboniferous. 

 Dr. McCook has just added a genus of spiders, Atypus, to our 

 >cene beds from the Isle of Wight. 



The Crustacea have found in Mr. B. N. Peach and in Prof. 

 Rupert Jones able and willing historians. Mr. Peach has taken 

 up the Carboniferous Macrouran Decapods, and Prof. Rupert 

 Jones the Palaeozoic Phyllopoda, aided by myself ; Prof. Jones 

 is attacking the Tertiary and Cretaceous as well as the Palaeozoic 

 Ostracoda, so that his hands will be full for many years to 

 come. 



The Echinodermata have lost Dr. T. Wright, who for years 

 acted as their monographer in the Palseontographical Society's 

 volumes, but they have secured the services of other accomplished 

 naturalists. Mr. Robert Etheridge, Jun., and Dr. P. Herbert 

 Carpenter have produced a grand monograph on the Blastoidea 

 in the British Museum ; and no doubt this is but the beginning 

 of good things to come, for although Mr. Etheridge has entered 

 upon a new sphere of work in the Australian Museum, Sydney, 

 Dr. P. Herbert Carpenter hopes to take up the stalked Crinoids 

 before long, and Mr. Percy Sladen, who, with Prof. P. Martin 

 Duncan, has already done so much good work amongst the 

 Indian Echinoderms and elsewhere, promises to take the star- 

 fishes in hand for us later on. 



The Corals have many friends, chief amongst whom is Prof. 

 P. Martin Duncan, and Prof. H. A. Nicholson, and various 

 other excellent workers, but they are even a "more difficult and 

 a less attractive group than the Echinodermata, and their 

 determination is not so satisfactory owing to their irregular and 

 heteromorphic growth. 



The Stromatoporoids have lost an investigator in the field in 

 Arthur Champernowne, whose unexpected and early loss we all 

 deplore. But in Prof. Nicholson they will find a most careful 

 and painstaking monographer, who has already given us one 

 fine instalment of his work in the Paloeontographical volume. 



In Prof. C. Lapworth we have an exponent of the structures 

 and affinities of the Graptolites as a class and of their strati- 

 graphical position in the rocks unsurpassed by any other worker. 

 With him must be associated the names ofBarrande, Carruthers, 

 Hopkinson, Nicholson, and a long list of foreign workers, all of 

 whom, however, look upon Lapworth as the highest authority 

 in this group. 



In the Spongida we are especially indebted to Dr. G. J. 

 Hinde, first for an excellent well illustrated quarto catalogue of 

 these organisms in the geological collection of the British 

 Museum, and secondly for the Palaeozoic part of a fine mono- 

 graph of these for the Palceontographical volume just issued. 



Nor must we omit to recall the names of Prof Zittel, of Dr. 

 Carter, of Prof. Sollas, and many other able workers in the 

 fossil sponges. 



In the Foraminifera we naturally recall the names of D'Orbigny, 

 D'Archiac, Carpenter, Parker, Brady and Jones, and Sir 

 William Dawson, our illustrious ex-President. Prof. Rupert 

 Jones is still at work on this group, and has recently published 

 a paper on Numtnulites elegans from the Eocene beds of 

 Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. 



Of late years fossil botany, too long neglected, has taken a 

 place of note in all those inquiiies concerning the origin of floras,, 

 the age of the stratified rocks, the former distribution of land 

 surfaces, and especially in all questions relative to the climate of 

 the globe in past times. 



Passing over the earlier period of the present century, when 

 fossil botany was known only by the works of Artis, Witham, 

 Schlotheim, Sternberg, Goeppert, Cotta, Lindley and Hutton, 

 Steinhauer and Adolphe Brongniart, we have to recall the names 

 of other workers who have only passed away in our own time, 

 such as Binney, Bunbury, Corda, Bowerbank, Heer, Unger, 

 Schimper, and Massalongo. 



In the period of fifty years, whose completion we have just 

 celebrated, the names of our countrymen Binney, Bowerbank, 

 Williamson, and Hooker, stand prominently forward con- 

 temporarily with those of Geinitz, Unger, Rossmasler, and 

 Schimper, in Germany. In 1845 Dawson and Lesquereux 

 entered the field in America, Hooker in England, and one of 

 the ablest writers on fossil plants, Oswald Heer, entered upon 

 his great work in Switzerland. In 1850 Massalongo in Italy, 

 and von Ettingshausen in Austria, were added to the roll of 

 famous palcEobotanists, and in 1853 Newberry joined the 

 American field of research. In i860 the work so long 

 abandoned by Brongniart, in France, was taken up by de 

 Saporta, and it is no small gratification to have him with us here 

 to-day, and to welcome him amongst our distinguished foreign 

 guests. 



About the same time my friend and colleague William Car- 

 ruthers commenced to write on fossil botany, and brought to 

 bear upon the subject that accurate and careful knowledge of 

 living forms without which such investigations must always prove 

 but futile. 



It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of species of 

 fossil plants that had been described up to the year 1837, but it 

 probably fell far short of a thousand. In 1828 less than 500 

 species were known to Brongniart. 



In the first edition of " Morris's Catalogue," published in 1843, 

 the number of British fossil plants recorded is 628. 



Careful lists were published by Goeppert and by Unger 

 in 1844 and 1845, giving a total of known species from 1600 

 to 1800. 



In 1849 the number had increased, according to Bronn's 

 "Index Palseontologicus " to over 2000, and the following year 

 Unger enumerated 2421 in his " Genera et Species Plantarum," 

 rather more than 500 of which may have been British. In 1852 

 Morris (2nd edition) gives the number of species as 750. Since 

 then, chiefly through the labours of Heer, Ettingshausen, 

 Lesquereux, Massalongo, Unger, and de Saporta, this number 

 has been more than quadrupled. Mr. Gardner estimates that at 

 least nine thousand species must have been described. This 

 great increase is chiefly due to the more careful exploration of 

 the Tertiary strata, in which the more highly organized and con- 

 sequently more differentiated plant forms occur. 



The number of plant remains described in Great Britain 

 during the whole fifty years has been extremely small, but much 

 has been accomplished in the study of fossil plants generally, 

 and in this task no one has been more earnest than Prof. 

 Williamson, of Owens College, Manchester. 



His investigations of the plants of the Coal period have been 

 of the most exhaustive nature, and from his researches into 

 their microscopic structures we are almost as well acquainted 

 with the minute tissues of these ancient denizens of the forests 

 of the Carboniferous epoch as we are with those in the parks 

 around Manchester to-day. 



Mr. Carruthers's " Memoirs on the Coniferos and Cycadeie, 

 and on the Fruiting Organs of the Lycopodiaceae " have greatly 

 advanced our knowledge of these interesting types, heretofore 

 but imperfectly known from their fossil remains. 



Mr. R. Kidston has devoted himself most earnestly to the 

 investigation of the fossil plants of our British coal-fields, and he 

 has detennincd not to rest satisfied merely to work out the 

 plants obtained by others in our museums, but he has visited all 

 our coal-fields and searched the shales on the spot for himself. 

 The results of his collectings may now be seen in the valuable 

 additions made to the Coal-measure series of plants in the 

 British Museum (Natural History). 



But it is more especially in reference to the Tertiary flora of 

 Britain that progress has been made of late years. 



Thanks to the labours of Mr. Starkie Gardner, who has not 

 only obtained abundant materials for an exhaustive monograph 



