168 HISTORY OF BOTANY 



tiaceae but that were afterwards shown to be the foliage 

 of Pteridosperms. Further, also in company with 

 Grand 'Eury, Renault laid the foundations of our know- 

 ledge of the Cordaitales, a group of plants that showed 

 characters allying them with both Cycads and Conifers. 



Although undoubtedly interest in the realm of fossil 

 botany during the period of which I am speaking centres 

 in the discoveries made in the rich strata of the older 

 Palaeozoic rocks known to geologists as the Devonian and 

 Carboniferous, the younger strata were also explored. 

 One of the most important finds from these latter rocks 

 was the type of fern frond named Glossopteris by Brong- 

 niart in 1828. Further investigations showed that the 

 flora of which Glossopteris was the type was very widely 

 spread over the southern hemisphere during the epoch 

 when the coal measures were being laid down in the north, 

 and, before the close of the Permian period, had spread 

 northwards, overlapping the forest vegetation composed 

 of Lepidodendra, Calamarieae, and such-like giant repre- 

 sentatives of our humble clubmosses and horsetails. 

 The study of the distribution of this Glossopteris flora 

 opened up* points of profound interest both climatic and 

 geographical, but into these questions I have no time 

 to enter. 



Palaeobotany had now become so important a branch 

 of the main science that it demanded a textbook to itself, 

 and so in the later years of the nineteenth century a 

 general compendium of the subject appeared from the 

 pen of Solms Laubach of Strasburg, of which an English 

 translation was published in 1891 by the Oxford Press. 

 Although valuable as forming a work of reference and a 

 summary of what had been discovered up to that date, 

 and as showing how important the study of fossil plants 

 was to the morphologist and taxonomist, it was un- 

 fortunate that the work, so far as its mode of presentation 

 was concerned, was so lacking in vitality and vividness 

 in expression, and in this respect stands in marked contrast 



