MEMOIRS 



OF THE 



GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



GREAT BRITAIN, &c. 



VOL. II.— PART II. 



On the Vegetation of the Carboniferous Period, as compared with that 

 of the present day. By Dr. Hooker, Botanist to the Geological 

 Survey of the United Kingdom. 



There are few persons who have devoted any time to the study of 

 fossil plants, especially those of the coal formation, and have not been 

 particularly interrogated on the value of their results, compared with 

 those derivable from the investigation of animal remains. What that 

 value may be, is daily asked of the naturalist, while in the field, by the 

 uninitiated yet curious looker-on, who eagerly offers his aid as a col- 

 lector in exchange for information upon the materials he gives or 

 offers to procure. It is no less frequently proposed by the young 

 geologist, who, though skilled in seizing the characters presented by 

 a comparatively indestructible shell or bone, is at a loss to appreciate 

 those afforded by the always compressed and more or less mutilated 

 fragments of what were originally perishable plants. 



It is with a view of instructing such enquirers that the following 

 introductory observations are thrown together. Relating exclusively 

 to the more obvious features of that formation which conspicuously 

 abounds in fossil vegetables, to their most prominent characters, and to 

 the botanical value of those features only, they can have no claim upon 

 the attention of the experienced palaeontologist. They are little more 

 than the first impressions received by a naturalist, who, having been 

 almost exclusively occupied with an existing Flora, is called upon to 

 contrast with it the fragmentary remains of another Flora, whose 

 species are, without an exception, different from those now living, which 

 represent in part the vegetation of a period indefinitely antecedent to the 

 present, and have been succeeded by still other plants, equally diverse 

 from both, and which have likewise perished. 



n. // 2 E 



•i. 



