SCIENCE 



NEW YORK. JANUARY 27, 1893. 



THE NEW BOTANY. 



BY LESTER F. WARD, WASHINGTON, D.O. 



This is an age of new sciences; at least we have a new chemis- 

 try, a new astronomy, and a new geology. May we not have a 

 new botany? The real science of botany is what we know of the 

 origin and nature of plants. All other knowledge about plants is 

 preparatory to this. Not only is this true of descriptive botany, 

 which is merely taking oflF the slabs, as it were, but it is true of 

 structural botany, even where this becomes histological. What 

 has been the object of all the thorough and profound investiga- 

 tions of the German botanists? To show how the existing vege- 

 tation has become what it is and how the various kinds of plants 

 are related to one another from the standpoint of real kinship. 

 In a word, it is the development of plant life that constitutes the 

 true science of botany. And think of the enormous labor and re- 

 search that it has required to arrive at this through the study of 

 the existing plants alone ! Whether we consider the working-out 

 of the anatomical structure of all the various types of vegetation 

 in order to conclude from the dififerent grades of tissue along 

 what lines development has taken place, or whether it be the re- 

 productive organs that engage attention, from the relationships 

 of which the course of botanical evolution may be inferred, the 

 task in either and in any case is immense and has properly en- 

 grossed the attention and absorbed the energies of the foremost 

 students of that noble science. And it is proper that the great 

 universities should have prominent chairs of botany to push on 

 the solution of the still unsolved problems of the vegetable world. 

 But there are two routes that lead to these important results. 

 There are two methods by which the development of plant life 

 may be studied. The one I have outlined is what Huxley has so 

 happily called " the method of Zadig." ' The past is seen through 

 the present and ancestral forms are inferred from the marks they 

 have stamped upon their posterity. It is a true scientific method, 

 usually the hest that nature affords, and it has led us to the greater 

 part of the knowlpdge we possess with respect to the evolution of 

 world systems, of our own planet's history, and of the develop- 

 ment of organic beings. 



But far better than this method of " retrospective prophecy " 

 or rational inference, wherever it can be applied, is the method 

 of direct comparison. No one claims that the nature of a form 

 can be reasoned out from no matter how complete a series of 

 facts with the same certainty that it can be learned if it can 

 be actually brought forward for direct observation. Yet this 

 latter is the method of paleontology in all the departments of life 

 to which it can be applied. In the animal kingdom this great 

 resource is freely drawn upon, but in the study of plants it is 

 almost entirely neglected. In all Europe I can only name one 

 chair of botany, that of the University of Strasburg, which is oc- 

 cupied by one who has paid special attention to the paleontologi- 

 cal side. In America there is none, and yet we have several able 

 students of botanical evolution from the morphological side, who 

 are doing excellent work. I will not be deemed invidious if I 

 mention the thorough and successful researches of Professor 

 Douglas H. Campbell of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. 



Why have we not equally competent men at work upon the 

 ancient forms? It can no longer be said that the material is 

 wanting. It exists in vast quantities and excellent quality. There 

 have been already collected and not yet at all studied fossil plants 

 enough to furnish employment for a corps of investigators during 

 the balance of the present century. But what exists is nothing 



' Nineteenth Century for June, 1880, vol. vll., p. 929. 



to what may be easily obtained. I could direct any one to hun- 

 dreds of localities where a little labor would certainly be rewarded 

 by abundant results. In nearly all the geological formations of 

 the United States, from the Devonian to the Pleistocene, there 

 exist rich beds of vegetable remains, as yet only slightly explored, 

 which, if thoroughly developed and studied, would, with scarcely 

 any doubt, throw more light on the evolution of our American 

 floras than any amount of histological investigation of those floras 

 themselves as we now find them could be expected to do. 



Without going into details, and omitting entirely the Paleozoic 

 floras, which, as every one knows, are very rich in America and 

 have been chiefly studied, a glance at the Mesozoic and Cenozoic 

 series may be of interest. It begins, so far as we now know the 

 plant-bearing horizons, with the Upper Trias, but this, as I have 

 shown,- is found in nine of the States and Territories of the 

 Union, and has already yielded 119 species of fossil plants, suffi- 

 cient to fix with great accuracy the geological position of the beds 

 and show the general character of the vegetation that flourished 

 on this continent at that remote jieriod. We also know that ex- 

 tensive Permian deposits occur in the West, and there is hope 

 that the interval between these and the plant-bearing Trias may 

 yet be bridged over by the discovery of Lower Triassic forms. 



We as yet know nothing of the Jurassic flora of America, un- 

 less the Trinity beds of Texas, the supposed Kootanie deposits of 

 Montana, and the lowest Potomac strata of Virginia pro\e to 

 reach downward into that system. But in these and the great 

 series of clays that overlie them and seem to occupy the entire 

 interval to the Laminated Sands of New Jersey, placed in the 

 Upper Cretaceous, we have an immense period represented by 

 successive plant-bearing horizons, and by scarcely any other re- 

 mains of life, from which, at this writing, nearly a thousand 

 different plant forms are known, with large collections still await- 

 ing study. If to this we add the great Dakota formation of Kan- 

 sas and Nebraska, we nearly double these figures, and have a 

 Lower and MidcUe Cretaceous flora that compares favorably in 

 its number and extent with that of the same areas at the present 

 day. 



Between this and the rich Laramie flora of the extreme Upper 

 Cretaceous there is a newly-discovered plant-bearing horizon in 

 the Montana formation, probably the equivalent of the Brily 

 River series of the Canadian geologists, the flora of which is as 

 yet very little known.' Of the Laramie flora I need scarcely 

 speak ■■ further than to say that all that has thus far been done is 

 merely preliminary to the elaboration of the extensive collections 

 that I have myself made in this vast store-house of facts bearing 

 upon the history and nature of plant life on this continent. 



Overlying the Laramie, or perhaps forming an upper member of 

 it, and occupying wide areas west of the great plains, are other 

 plant-bearing deposits, some of them now known as the Denver 

 formation, others of more doubtful age embracing the Carbon and 

 Evanston coal-fields of Wyoming, others farther north long 

 known as the Fort Union group, and all taken together nearly or 

 quite filling the interval fi-om the recognized Laramie to the 

 Green River group, about whose Tertiary age therehas never been 

 any question ; and this last itself has entombed along with its 

 beautiful fishes and with insects a great number of vegetable re- 

 mains in an admirable state of preservation. 



In Montana, about the sources of both the Upper Missouri and 

 the Y'ellowstone Rivers, especially in the Bozeman coal mines 



^ Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Proceedings, vol. HI., 1891, 

 pp. 23-31. 



3 See the American Journal of Science for April, 18S4, 3d Series, vol. xxvii., 

 pp. 292-303. 



■"See my Synopsis of the Flora of the Laramie Group. Sixth Annual Report 

 of the U. S. Geological Survey, 1884-85, pp. 399-557, pi. xxxl.-lsv. ; also, Types 

 of the Laramie Flora. Bulletin of the U. S. Geological Survey, No. 37. 



