166 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



to the hasty and ill-considered proposal of Eichler to 

 subdivide the Angiosperms into Chalazogamae and 

 Acrogamae, but this idea was soon abandoned after the 

 discovery of the same phenomenon in Betula, Juglans, 

 and other genera by Nawaschin and Benson. Van 

 Tieghem also, in 1898, put forward a fanciful and quite 

 artificial classification, based chiefly on the anatomy of 

 the root and on certain features of the corolla and the 

 state of development of the seed, but this scheme also 

 very soon died a natural death. 



The more peculiarly phylogenetic systems that are 

 associated with the names of Engler, Hallier, and Lotsy 

 we will discuss later. 



PROGRESS IN PALAEOPHYTOLOGY 



I must now invite your attention to the progress that 

 had been made in a department of botany that you have 

 already learnt had made its first appearance in the 

 earlier years of the nineteenth century, viz. Palaeobotany. 

 I have already referred to the works of Brongniart, 

 Goeppert, and others, and I may also remind you that 

 Robert Brown published a paper on a fossil Lycopod 

 about the same period. Another eminent palaeobotanist 

 was Binney, who described the fossil trees Sigillaria and 

 Calamodendron, which, on the ground that they presented 

 secondary thickening, he regarded as Gymnosperms, 

 a view that was shared by Brongniart. Carruthers also 

 studied the fossil Equiseta and Lepidodendra in 1868, 

 and founded the genus Bennettites to include certain 

 stems and fructifications which he imagined were of 

 Cycadean affinity, and which were destined many years 

 afterwards to play an important part in the controversy 

 concerning the origin of the Angiosperms. Twenty years 

 later Solms Laubach discovered in these fructifications 

 a dicotyledonous embryo enclosed in an exalbuminous 

 seed. The whole anatomy of this important Mesozoic 



