August 9, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



145 



not yet received, but they never came, as 

 the hand that was to direct them was soon 

 stricken and compelled to lay down the pen 

 that had written so many volumes and the 

 pencil that had done more than any other 

 to embellish the science of fossil plants. 



His last undertaking seems to have been 

 a work on the fossil Nympheaceas and two 

 preliminary papers had already appeared 

 in the ' Comptes Eendus.' He showed me a 

 wonderful series of specimens and the in- 

 imitable drawings of them that he was 

 making. 



The question naturally arises : Upon 

 whom is the mantle of this eminent investi- 

 gator destined to fall ? In addition to a large 

 amount of posthumous work that is known 

 to exist, much of which is probably nearly 

 ready for publication, there are the large 

 collections which have been sent to him 

 from many sources and which are greatly 

 in need of elaboration. 



He left a large family, children and grand- 

 •children, and at least two of his sons have 

 grown to manhood, the eldest. Count Sa- 

 porta, whose acquaintance I inade, as well 

 as that of the Countess, was the private sec- 

 retary to the Comte de Paris, and even 

 while I was there he had received a dis- 

 patch announcing that the Comte was dying 

 at his place of exile in England, whither he 

 had to repair immediately, and we traveled 

 together to Marseilles. Another married 

 son, the Viscount Antoine de Saporta, has 

 m^ade at least one important contribution 

 to fossil plants, viz., a review of Nathorst's 

 ' Fossil Flora of Japan,'* based on the origi- 

 nal Swedish text before the appearance of the 

 authorized French translation, which was 

 regarded of sufficient moment to call forth 

 a reply from the authorf . He maj"^ have 

 written still other papers which have not 

 come to my notice. "Whether this young 



* Ann. de Sci. Nat., Bot., 6th Ser., Vol. XV., 1883, 

 pp. 149-167. 



fLoo. cit., pp. 337-341. 



man is to follow in the footsteps of his father 

 remaias to be seen. 



There are two features of Saj^orta's work 

 which have not been mentioned, viz., at- 

 tention to bibliographical matters and a 

 tendency to philosophize. For the past ten 

 years Saporta had been contributing most 

 valuable summaries in the entire domain of 

 vegetable paleontology, which were pub- 

 lished in the ' Eevue generale de botanique,' 

 under the direction of M. Bonnier. Many 

 of these amoiint to original contributions 

 and include the description and illustration 

 of new forms. 



With regard to his philosophical tenden- 

 cies it should be said that he allowed the 

 logic of facts to influence his thoughts, and 

 was, from the outset, a consistent exponent 

 of the general doctrine of evolution and the 

 special doctrine of plant development. In 

 addition to the works above referred to, 

 which directly bear upon this subject, and 

 to the general treatment of it in his popular 

 works, he has contributed quite a number 

 of articles to the popular magazines, especi- 

 ally to the 'Eevue des Deux Mondes,' which 

 have afibrded him an opportunity to strike 

 out the broad outlines of a general philoso- 

 phy. One of the most original of his ra- 

 tional conclusions, and one that is fally sus- 

 tained by the facts, but almost completely 

 ignored by all other writers, is that the 

 most important subdivisions of the geo- 

 logical scale must be drawn at different 

 points for plant development from those at 

 which they are commonly drawn for ani- 

 mal development. For example, the Meso- 

 phytic age properly ends with the Jurassic 

 instead of with the Cretaceous, while the 

 Tertiary for fossil plants closes with the 

 Miocene instead of with the Pliocene. 



PROF. W. C. WILLIAMSON. 



In my series of sketches of the leading 

 paleobotanists,* referred to above, still 



* Fifth Annual Eept. U. S. Geol. Surv., 1885, p. 

 376. 



