FOUNDATION OF PALAEOBOTANY 123 



next epoch the lower plants were replaced by forms that 

 have no modern representatives, e.g. speciaUscd Ferns 

 and Conifers, such as we now regard as belonging to the 

 Triassic horizon. The third period was the Mesozoic, 

 when Cycads abounded; while the fourth period was 

 characterised by the presence of plants not markedly 

 different from those now existing. The Histoirc never 

 got beyond the first volume and a fragment of a second, 

 deaUng with the Lepidodendra, wliich he regarded as 

 intimately related to the Lycopodiaceae. 



Witham, a Yorkshire palaeobotanist, deserves to be 

 mentioned as the first to study the Carboniferous plants 

 histologically. His principal work was a paper on The 

 Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables Found in the Car- 

 boniferous and Oolitic Deposits of Great Britain, published 

 in 1833. 



Another great name in the history of fossil botany 

 was that of Robert Goeppert. " Endowed with the true 

 German devotion to his specialty, with keen observing 

 and analytic powers, with a restless activity, exceptional 

 opportunities and a long hfe, he was able to create for 

 the science a vast wealth of new facts and give it a solid 

 body of laboriously wrought truth. If Brongniart laid 

 the foundations of palaeobotany Goeppert may properly 

 be said to have built its superstructure." His first 

 important work was his Systema Filicum Fossilium, 

 pubHshed in 1836, in which he compared fossil and hving 

 Ferns and illustrated the former profusely in well-executed 

 plates. In 1841 there followed the Genera of Fossil 

 Plants, which appeared both in German and French, and 

 also a monograph on the fossil flora of Silesia, Goeppert 's 

 native district. 



In 1845 several important additions to the literature 

 of palaeobotany were made, such as Unger's Synopsis 

 Plantar um Fossilium, Corda's Flora dcr Vorwclt, and 

 Goeppert's study of amber. Unger's work in this and 

 succeeding years was specially important for his views 



