RELATIONS TO GEOLOGY AND* BOTANY 391 



are not merely medals of creation, but are still more — organisms with 

 an intensely interesting story to tell and one that can contribute much 

 to our knowledge of past climate, topography, geography, and paleo- 

 zoology. Modern plants are the end products of age-long evolution; 

 tlieir broader taxonomic relations and distribution are meaningless with- 

 out a knowledge of their extinct forebears. Time and place and space 

 are emphasized for the benefit of the botanical tyro, since there are even 

 some paleobotanists who do not know that the world was not made in 

 the six days of the Pentateuch — at least, a million years is but as a day 

 to them — while form and structure are emphasized for the benefit of the 

 geological tyro. 



Beginners, and some who are not beginners, attach much faith to 

 taxonomy, both geologic and biologic. We doubtless must have classiti- 

 cations as well as language; but classifications are utilitarian and not 

 objective. Time was and is continuous, and so is geological history. 

 Nature knows no dead-line between geological systems, nor does she fur- 

 nish any pigeonholes or Dewey system for filing plants and animals. 



Syllabus of Subject-matter 



Life is as continuous as time, and I can not believe that it has ever 

 been shortcircuited, despite the seeming plausibility of the views whicii 

 would ascribe times of active mutation (De Vriesian sense), such as the 

 time of early radiation of the flowering plants, followed by long intervals 

 during which natural selection was operative. 



With this apology for the seeming synopticalness of what follows, I 

 append the abstract of a syllabus of the ground I consider it desirable 

 to cover in the teaching of paleobotany. 



Introductory. 



Historical — The pre-scientific period, the time of Diluvial hj^potheses, and 



the Modern period. 

 Methods of preservation of fossil plants. 



General principles — Evolution, Adaptive radiation. Race periods, Re- 

 capitulation, Conservative organs and organisms. 

 Relation to other sciences — Botany, geology, paleoclimatology, paleo- 

 ecology, paleogeography. 

 The evolution of plants. 



Evidence of pre-Paleozoic plants. 

 The pre-chlorophyllic .stage of evolution. 

 The algal stage. 

 The terrestrial stage. 

 Origin of seeds. 

 Secondary thickening. 

 Thallophyta. 



