50 A Retrospect of Palceontology for FoHij Years. 



of scientific thought which was brought about in the minds of men 

 by Darwin's teaching. In making a retrospect of the work recorded 

 in this journal from 1864 to the present time, the evolution of 

 geological and palaeontological ideas is most marked, and it is no 

 small gratification to feel that the Geological Magazine has been 

 enabled to incorporate in its pages so much valuable material in aid 

 of the progress of both these sciences. 



As has been stated in the earlier part of this Retrospect, the 

 Geological Magazine has had the satisfaction of publishing articles 

 from a large number of early and celebrated geologists, many of 

 whom alas are now no longer with us. 



Fossil Plants. — We record with pleasure the name of Professor 

 John Phillips, who, in 1865, described an interesting specimen of 

 fossil wood bored by Teredo and enclosed in flint, from the Chalk 

 of Winchester, preserved in the Oxford Museum. Professor E. W. 

 Claypole, of Ohio, described and figured the oldest known tree, 

 Glyptodendron Ealonense, from the Upper Silurian, Eaton, Ohio, 

 U.S.A. No fewer than eighteen valuable contributions on Paleeo- 

 botany (from 1865 to 1885) have been made by our old colleague, 

 William Carruthers, on Carboniferous plants ; Mesozoic Cycadean 

 stems and fruits ; on the petrified forest near Cairo ; and the plants of 

 the Brazilian Coal-beds ; nor must we omit to mention his admirable 

 lecture at the Royal Institution " On the Cryptogamic Forests of the 

 Coal Period" (1869, pp. 289-300). Another distinguished botanist, 

 Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, wrote in 1872 on the Conifera3 from 

 Solenhofen, and on fossil wood from the Eocene of Heme Bay and 

 the Isle of Thanet. In 1868 George Maw described some flower- 

 like forms from the leaf-bed of the Lower Bagshot, Studland Bay. 

 Professor H. A. Nicholson recoi'ded the existence of plants in the 

 Skiddaw Slates. Dr. 0. Feistmantel contributed notes on the Fossil 

 Flora of Eastern Australia and Tasmania, dealing with those from 

 the Tertiary, Secondary, Carboniferous, and Devonian formations. 

 Walter Keeping described some early plant-remains from the 

 Silurian of Central Wales, in which he endeavoured to dis- 

 criminate between tracks and markings made by annelids and other 

 animals and those left on these old rocks by seaweeds and other 

 simple plants. Dr. Constantino Baron von Ettingshausen wrote on 

 the Tertiary Floras of Australia and New Zealand, and J. S. Gardner 

 on the Mesozoic Angiosperms and Flowering or Phanerogamous 

 Plants, in which an exhaustive examination is made of the Oolitic, 

 Cretaceous, and Tertiary Plants of the British Isles, as known to 

 the author in 1886. Henry Woodward described some fragmentary 

 Mesozoic plant-remains from South Australia. 



In later years A. C. Seward took up the subject of Fossil Botany, 

 described the stems of CaJamites undnlatus, the leaves of Cyclopteris 

 from the Coal-measures of Yorkshire, and wrote on the specific 

 variation in Sigillarice ; E. A. Newell Arber followed and defined 

 the Glossopteris flora, and discoursed on Homo3omorphy among Fossil 

 Plants. Plant-remains from British Columbia and from Argentina 

 have also been described. 



