CHAPTER V 

 PALAEOBOTANY, 1860-1900 



The opening years of the period under review were not 

 marked by great activity in the study of the fossil flora, 

 and discovery remained for a time almost at a standstill. 

 The long series of researches conducted by Brongniart and 

 by Goeppert had drawn almost to a close, and no investigator 

 of similar calibre to either had appeared. The publication 

 of Hofmeister's wonderful researches had directed the 

 attention of anatomists to the study of the Cryptogamia 

 and to the relationships between them and the flowering 

 plants, and though the clue to such relationships came to 

 be recognized as lying hidden in the rocks, the search for 

 it there was not prosecuted with much energy, while 

 the problems presented by living forms remained rather 

 suggested than unravelled. Darwin's great masterpiece, 

 even newer than the work of Hofmeister, and equally 

 epoch-making, was drawing men's minds to the great 

 physiological problems connected with the life of the 

 individual as well as the evolution of the race, and the 

 more ardent of the younger botanists were led to researches 

 of a physiological rather than an anatomical character. 



Still in the early sixties there were some who were 

 concerning themselves with the solution of the problems 

 raised by the fossils. Little was known with certainty 

 as to affinities either among the fossil plants, or remains 

 of plants, themselves, or between them and their living 

 successors. The pioneer work of minute description of 

 the forms as they were discovered was what was at the 

 time the only possible line of research. A few scattered 



