37O HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



by Brongniart on the structure of Lepidodendron, Sigillaria, 

 and Stigmaria is still treasured as a model of accurate methods 

 of observation. His chronological summary of the periods of 

 vegetation, and of the different floras according to their succes- 

 sive appearance on the face of the earth, is the first and most 

 complete compilation of the fossil floras. 



The numerous and valuable phytological works of H. R. 

 Goeppert 1 extend over half a century, from 1834 to 1884. 

 No other scientific man has been such a prolific writer on fossil 

 plants, and there is scarcely any domain in fossil botany which 

 has not come under Goeppert's special investigations. His 

 monographs on the genera of fossil plants (1841-46), on the 

 Tertiary floras of Silesia and Java, on fossil ferns (1836), and 

 conifers (1850), as well as his excellent researches on the micro- 

 scopic structure of fossil woods, coal and brown-coal, are 

 among the best contributions that have been made to the 

 knowledge of fossil vegetations. 



In comparison with the flora of the older geological periods 

 that of the Tertiary period was for a long time little investigated, 

 but about the middle of the nineteenth century several works 

 were devoted to this period. Franz Unger, Professor of 

 Botany and Zoology in Graz, published between 1841 and 

 1847 the Chloris Protogcea^ in which more than one hundred 

 and twenty new species of Tertiary plants are described, illus- 

 trated, and classified under genera still existing. 



In a second work on the flora of Sotzka, a great number 

 of fossil Tertiary plants are represented on forty-seven folio 

 plates, and the Sylloge plantar urn fossilium (1860-66) con- 

 tains descriptions and illustrations of three hundred and 

 twenty-seven Tertiary species. The Synopsis of fossil plants 

 (1845), of which a second edition appeared in 1855, provides a 

 summary of the whole of phyto-palaeontological material, and it 

 was accompanied by the well-known series of coloured plates 

 which Unger designed to convey an impression of the charac- 

 teristic appearance presented by the successive floras in the 

 world's history. 



Alexander Braun (1845) made a special study of the remains 

 of Tertiary plants found near Oeningen in Switzerland. The 



1 Heinrich Robert Goeppert, born 1800, at Sprottau in Lower Silesia, 

 Doctor of Medicine, was originally a pharmaceutical chemist; in 1827 

 University Tutor, in 1831 Professor of Botany in Breslau ; died i8th May 

 1884. 



