l] STERNBERG AND BRONGNIART. 6 



the quality rather than the quantity of his contributions to 

 Palaeozoic botany ; and among American authors Steinhauer's ^ 

 name must hold a prominent place in the list of those who helped 

 to found this branch of palaeontology. Among German writers, 

 Schlotheim stands out prominently as one who first published 

 a work on fossil plants which still remains an important book 

 of reference. Writing in 1804, he draws attention to the 

 neglect of fossils from a scientific standpoint ; they are simply 

 looked upon, he says, as " unimpeachable documents of the 

 floods" His book contains excellent figures of many Coal- 

 Measure plants, and we find in its pages occasional com- 

 parisons of fossil species with recent plants of tropical latitudes. 

 Among the earlier authors whose writings soon become familiar 

 to the student of fossil plants, reference must be made to Graf 

 Sternberg, who was born three years before Schlotheim, but 

 whose work came out some years later than that of the latter. 

 His great contribution to Fossil Botany entitled Versuch einer 

 geognostisch-hotanischen Darstellung der Flora der Vorwelt, was 

 published in several parts between the years 1820 and 1838 ; 

 it was drawn up with the help of the botanist Presl, and 

 included a valuable contribution by Corda^. In addition to 

 descriptions and numerous figures of plants from several geo- 

 logical horizons, this important work includes discussions on 

 the formation of coal, with observations on the climates of past 

 ages. 



Sternberg endeavoured to apply to fossil plants the same 

 methods of treatment as those made use of in the case of recent 

 species. About the same time as Sternberg's earlier parts 

 were published, Adolphe Brongniart ^ of Paris began to enrich 

 palaeobotanical science by those splendid researches which 

 have won for him the title of the "Father of palaeobotany." In 

 Brongniart's Prodrome, and Histoire des vdgdtaux fossiles, and 

 later in his Tableau des genres de vdgdtauxfossiles, we have not 

 merely careful descriptions and a systematic arrangement of 

 the known species of fossil plants, but a masterly scientific 



1 Steinhauer (18). 2 Schlotheim (04). 



3 Sternberg (20). * Brongniart (28) (28^) (49). 



