76 Transactions of the American Institute. 



vegetable kingdom ; something that shows ns how small is our own 

 knowledge, and how great and capable of extension is the plan of 

 the vegetable kingdom. And when we consider further that we 

 know of these fossil plants only what their remnants have taught us, 

 it affords a widening field of wonder and of thought. As it is more 

 interesting to the botanist to go out and collect plants for himself 

 than to study them in the class-books, so this subject is of the deepest 

 interest to those who will examine the primeval flora and the coal 

 formations ; who will split open the rocks and see the forms that no 

 one ever saw before, and perhaps make discoveries of facts which the 

 world never knew before concerning that remote period of time. I 

 must plead guilty as a fossil botanist — I mean a botanist studying 

 fossils — to having the deepest interest in this subject. And it arises in 

 part from the very fact that different names are sometimes given to the 

 same plant — as the tree is called sigillaria, the root stigimaria, and 

 the nut still another name ; and it requires much observation and 

 study to discover and to show that these different names all belong to 

 what was really one and the same plant. As our knowledge increases 

 we may be able to dispense with many of these old names, which is 

 more than can be said for modern botany. What would we have 

 been without these old plants, without this great provision made for 

 us in primitive times, before man existed upon the earth ? These 

 plants form a part of the same plan to which we belong, and undoubt- 

 edly that plan existed at the time these old Paleozoic plants grew. 

 And now, I may say, even in this Christmas time, as we gather around 

 the hearth, although our coal fire does not roar and cackle and blaze 

 like the old yule log of our ancestors, yet the trunks of our old Sigil- 

 laria, burning upon our hearths to-night, send forth a quiet, kindly 

 glow, befiting their great age and long burial in the earth. And 

 the happy hearts that gather around the Christmas fireside may thank 

 God that we have had these great stores prepared for us in the times 

 of old, and that we have hearts and minds fitted to enter somewhat 

 into that great plan which stored them up, and for the enjopnent, in 

 a measure, even of the beauty of the plants that lived so long ago. 



