C.—GEOLOGY 59 
certainly the better of the two productions, and deals with the flora of 
the Carboniferous rocks of the Thuringen district. Parkinson’s work is 
more general and ranges through Tertiary, Mesozoic and Paleozoic 
floras. By this time fossil botany had nearly established itself as a science. 
The study of these remains during the preceding century had very 
materially assisted in forcing the acceptance of fossils as organic in origin ; 
in exposing the absurdity of the occurrence of one single Noah’s flood, 
which produced all the surface rocks of the earth at one and the same time ; 
and in showing that the fossil plants obtained from rocks represented 
accumulations at different times, and under conditions different from 
the present. 
One final paper belonging to this period may be mentioned because of 
the excellence of the illustrations. The Antediluvian Phytology of Artis 
belied the ineptness of its title. ‘The figures were well executed, and it is, 
to this day, a reference work in determining fossil plants. 
PALZOBOTANY—A SCIENCE. 
But fossil botany as a science was initiated by Adolphe Brongniart when, 
in 1822, he published a classification of fossil plants, and when the first 
part of his Histoire des Végétaux fossiles appeared in 1828. The sub-title 
of the latter is illuminating. It reads: Botanical and geological researches 
on the plants sealed up in the different rocks of the earth. 
William Smith’s paper, Strata identified by organised Fossils (1815), and 
the works of Cuvier, Lamarck and Brongniart in fossil animal and plant 
remains, respectively, completely changed the aspect of geology. A 
knowledge of fossils, and of geology, was no longer the hobby of a few 
interested naturalists, whose main work lay in other walks of life; but 
studies under the titles Geology and Paleontology became recognised 
as parts of the scientific equipment of universities, either as separate 
departments or under the care of biology. 
The study of geology had been enriched, by this time, on its minera- 
logical and stratigraphical sides, and we may say that nearly every import- 
ant geological theory had been exploited, or, at any rate, envisaged, if 
only in an elementary form. Practically every one of these theories had 
its advocates. There were those who still believed that most fossils were 
 lusus naturae ; and those who considered most of them of organic origin, 
without denying that usus naturae, in a different sense, did occur. (To-day 
We can point to specimens of beekite that will pass muster, at first sight, 
for nummulites of the type Assilina; and others that are perhaps less 
easily confused with actual fossil genera.) Many believed in great con- 
vulsions in the earth, either one or several, and pointed to actual geological 
_ phenomena in proof of their contentions : others advocated continuity of 
known world conditions. Some advanced the efficacy of water, others of 
_ volcanic action and earthquakes, to bring about these altered conditions. 
These workers were, for the most part, ordinary reasonable people, and it 
Was not a question of selecting between a right and a wrong explanation 
or observation, for like the blind men describing the elephant they were 
all partly right, and partly wrong. The question became one of proba- 
bility among all the possibilities that had been suggested. A summation 
