122 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



not altogether ignorant of the existence of fossils. These 

 were, however, remains of animal life and there is no sure 

 evidence that they identified any petrifactions as of 

 vegetable origin. When fossils really began to be collected 

 and studied in the end of the sixteenth and early years of 

 the seventeenth centuries they were looked upon as the 

 remnants of vegetable and animal life that had existed on 

 the earth previous to the Noachian Deluge, and it is 

 somewhat amusing to read in Luther's commentary on 

 Genesis the view expressed that indications of the Deluge 

 would be found in the form of petrified wood near mines 

 and other centres of early man's activities ! 



Johann Scheuchzer brought out a great work in 1709 

 on the supposed remains of the Deluge, one of which was 

 the famous Salamander fossil which he called " Homo 

 diluvii testis," and which he believed to be the skeleton 

 of a man who had witnessed the flood ! By the end of 

 the eighteenth century, however, the Deluge theory had 

 begun to fall into disrepute, and naturalists adopted 

 saner views on the nature of the objects that were con- 

 stantly being extracted from the earth's crust. Apparently 

 the first to enunciate sounder scientific ideas on fossils 

 was Johann Blumenbach, who, in 1790, asserted that the 

 organisms of which these fossils were the remains were 

 pre-Adamitic, and that there had been many faunas and 

 floras on the earth before the advent of man. 



Undoubtedly the founder of modern palaeophytology 

 is Adolphe Brongniart, who, in 1828, began the publication 

 of his Histoire des vegetaux fossiles. " The systematic 

 manner in which the science was organised and built up 

 by him made him the highest authority on the subject 

 of fossil plants, and the numerous more or less elaborate 

 memoirs that continued to appear showed that none of 

 the minor details were neglected." Brongniart divided 

 the geological series into four periods ; in the first the 

 dominant vegetation was chiefly cryptogamic, composed 

 of Ferns, Lepidodendra, and arboreal Equiseta; in the 



