390 E. W. BERRY— THE TEACHING OE PALEOBOTANY 



intimately associated with the latter science, while in Britain, and to a 

 less extent in France, it has been a foster-child of botany. Neither rela- 

 tionship has resulted in a fully ronnded-ont child. In the other conntries 

 of the world paleobotany is still a foundling. I should like to insist that 

 plants are still plants, even though fossil, and that paleobotany is the 

 botany of all time, while botany is the botany of but a fraction of geo.- 

 logic time, namely, the present. This seeming inversion results from the 

 "fundamental, experimental, genetical" state of the biological sciences 

 at the present time and the unfashionableness of displaying any ac- 

 (luaintance with plants or animals. 



Students desiring instruction in paleobotany are either from botanical 

 departments with no knowledge of earth history and but slight knowl- 

 edge of plants, or they are from geological departments and also with no 

 knowledge of plants. One generally gets some of both. This being true, 

 shall the emphasis be placed on the historical side, and the succession of 

 floras that have clothed the earth be given in so much detail that the 

 student comes forth a stratigraphic paleobotanist, or shall structure, 

 rather than form and habit, govern the method of presentation? 



In England, where the chief workers in paleobotany have been pro- 

 fessors of botany in universities or colleges, the work with fossil plants 

 has been almost entirely anatomical and morphological and quite without 

 geological perspective or geological results. 



It has always seemed to me that any young man with good eyesight, 

 an average brain, and reasonable industry can do satisfactory anatomical 

 work. If you object that he can not interpret his results, I am inclined 

 to consider it a blessing in disguise, in the present state of our knowl- 

 edge. On the other hand, a student who can visualize the epic of bygone 

 life and appreciate the relations of his fossil to its fellows and to its 

 physical environment is indeed a rara-avis. 



Since it can not be hoped to train a student so that he will step forth 

 from his ahna mater fully equipped as a stratigraphic paleozoologist or 

 paleobotanist, it has seemed to me more desirable to subordinate strati- 

 graphic details (easily acquired in practice) and to give a broad and 

 philosophical treatment. Without presuming that my own experience is 

 necessarily a guide to others, I can only say that I have tried both meth- 

 ods and find the latter much more profitable. The framework of the 

 discussion is phylogeny. We start as near the source of the stream of 

 life as is possible, with the pre-Cambrian bacteria, and trace the rise, 

 the evolution, and the radiation of the great groups amid the changing 

 environments of the past. Histological and morphological aspects are 

 treated as fully as knowledge permits, in emphasizing that fossil plants 



