PALEONTOLOGY. 375 



elucidate the developmental phases of the floras of past time 

 in the sense of the theory of evolution. 



In his Cours de la Botanique fossile (Paris, 1881-85), M. B. 

 Renault describes the fossil cycads, cordaites, sigillarias, lepido- 

 dendrons, stigmarias, ferns, and conifers. His classification 

 adheres closely to the systematic arrangement of living plants. 

 The same plant-groups, together with thallophytes, mosses, 

 calamarias, and equisetes, are ably described in a German 

 work which appeared about the same time, Einkihing in 

 die Palaophytologie^ by Count von Solms-Laubach (Leipzig, 

 1887). 



Upon the whole, botanists have always taken a more im- 

 portant part than geologists in the advance of palaeophytology, 

 and in recent years the purely botanical treatment has become 

 even more predominant. The severe strictures passed by 

 Schenk on the uncritical palaeontological papers that appeared 

 so numerously in the middle of the last century have had their 

 influence ; now the author of a paper on any department of 

 palaeophytology is expected to have a sound knowledge of 

 systematic botany. 



It cannot be said that palaeozoology has yet arrived at this 

 desirable standpoint. Just as palaeophytology has come to be 

 regarded and treated scientifically as a branch of botany in the 

 only true and wide sense, so should palaeontology be regarded 

 as a branch of zoology in its wide sense. But while the 

 greatest scientific successes have been achieved by those re- 

 search students who have treated their particular subject from 

 this wider aspect, we find in the universities that palaeontology 

 is often relegated to the care of a geological specialist. Cuvier 

 and Lamarck in France, and Richard Owen, Wallace, Huxley, 

 Ray Lankester, Alleyne Nicholson have been brilliant ex- 

 ponents in Great Britain of the higher and wider scope of 

 zoology. But comparatively few individuals have such a 

 thorough grasp of zoological and geological knowledge as to 

 enable them to treat palaeontological researches worthily, and 

 there has accumulated a dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeonto- 

 logical literature wherein the fossil remains of animals are 

 named and pigeon-holed solely as an additional ticket of the 

 age of a rock-deposit, with a wilful disregard of the much 

 more difficult problem of their relationships in the long chain 

 of existence. 



The terminology which has been introduced in the innumer- 



