BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 169 
“Graphephorum flecuosum, only doubtfully referred to 
Graphephorum by Prof. Thurber, is neither one nor the other, 
. but a good genus. 
Graphephorum melicoides should be Trisetum melicoides, or if 
a genus (Graphephorum) be made for it, it should come next to 
Trisetum or Avena, for it is evidently Avenaceous.” 
The Fossil Flora of the Globe.’ 
BY LESTER F. WARD. 
_ Historica, Vrew.—The writers of antiquity make no men- 
tion of any form of vegetable petrification. ‘The earliest allusion 
- to the subject was made by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth 
_ Sentury, Agricola and Gesner treated of petrified wood in the 
Sixteenth century. The first mention of any kind of vegetable 
Impression in the rocks was made by Daniel Major, of Jena, in 
1664. In 1699 Edward Lhwyd, of London, wrote an extensive 
treatise on such impressions. He maintained that they were the — 
remains of plants that had perished in the Noachian deluge. fi 
M09 Scheuchzer, of Switzerland, defended this view in his 
Herbarium Diluvianum,” a large work, in which he described 
and figured many fossil plants, referring them to species living 
in Europe. In 1718 this author went so far as to classify the 
Species. A powerful reaction against this method followed ; 
oe apttisons with living plants were carefully sai which failed 
by Count Sternberg and Adolphe Brongniart, who jointly 
. Stag the science of vegetable paleontology in the first 
q og of the present century. ; 
te first attempt to place it upon the footing of a systematic 
1 $e 
Philadelpin ag by the author, of a paper read before the A, A. A.S., 
