J. Starkie Gardner — Mesozoic Angiosperms. 343 



feet specimen with all its organs of reproduction as well as of 

 nutrition, can alone declare with absolute certainty upon its identity 

 or affinity." This mutual dependence requires recognition at the 

 hands of scientific men. 



The interesting collection of biographies of eminent palasobotanists 

 is a feature of the work which can be but briefly alluded to here. 

 The names that stand out prominently, and to whom half the litera- 

 ture is credited, are Brongniart, Goppert, Unger, Lesquereux, Heer, 

 Massalongo, Ettingshausen and Saporta ; but the biographies are 22 in 

 number, and include the names of our countrymen Witham, Binney, 

 Bunbury, and our eminent and yet living contemporaries Williamson, 

 Dawson, and Carruthers. Of Prof. Williamson, he says : " Of the 

 merits of this work, as of all this author's investigations, it is 

 certainly unnecessary to speak here." Of Dawson : " A geologist 

 rather than a botanist, he has done excellent service, not only in 

 elucidating the important problems of Acadian geology, but also in 

 demonstrating the value and legitimacy of the evidence furnished by 

 vegetable remains." The value of Carruthers' work also receives 

 due acknowledgment, his investigations with regard to fossil fruits 

 having especially " widely expanded this field of knowledge." That 

 Mr. Ward has gracefully acknowledged our indebtedness to these 

 authors no one will dispute, but some may think the praise in other 

 cases has been a little indiscriminate, and that a more critical ex- 

 amination into the quality, as well as the bulk of the work produced, 

 would have rendered greater service to botanists who may require 

 to have recourse to it. 



It appears that Walch (1769) was the first to offer anything like 

 a nomenclature of fossil plants, though a few terms such as Litlw- 

 xylon had for some time previously been in use. Catamites is the 

 only one of his names, except Carpolithes, that has survived, and 

 this was applied under the misconception that the plants in question 

 were large reeds. Steinhauer (1818) was the first to apply specific 

 names to fossil plants. Schlotheim soon afterwards ' introduced, 

 among others, two terms which specially interest us, Palmacites 

 and Poacites, describing respectively 15 and 4 species. Sternberg 2 

 established the genus Flabellaria (I am purposely omitting all re- 

 ference to Cryptogamic and Gyinnospermous genera, in order to con- 

 centrate attention on the successive steps by which our knowledge 

 of fossil Angiosperms has been arrived at), and assumed three periods 

 of vegetation, that of Coal-plants, that in which Cycadean types pre- 

 dominated, and that of fucoids and dicotyledons, corresponding of 

 course with the three ages of geology. The system of Martius, which 

 should be interesting, is unfortunately passed over, and we are 

 brought down to Brongniart's first memoir, 3 in which the only 

 genera that interest us are Exogenites and Endogenites, to include 

 stems whose internal organization is recognizable. Many Angio- 

 spermous fruits, leaves and stems had been figured, and more or less 

 described, before this time, for example by Parkinson and Mantell, 

 but none scientifically. In 1828 Brongniart's " Prodrome " ap- 



1 Petrafactenkunde, 1820. 2 Flora der Vorwelt. 



3 Mem. du Musee d'hist. Nat., Paris, 1822, vol. viii. pp. 209-210. 



