FEOM THE HUTTON COLLECTION. 31 



owners, viewers, and overmen, would be required to carry on 

 such investigations with success ; and these considerations must 

 have had great weight in deterring students and others from en- 

 gaging in such expensive pursuits. Thus very few additional 

 species have been recorded from this Coal-field since the time 

 Lindley and Hutton discontinued the publication of the "Fossil 

 Flora." The zest also for such pursuits, it must be admitted, 

 has considerably cooled down in the North of England since 

 Hutton's time, and thus, though coal has been worked enormously 

 of late years, yet the opportunities offered for collecting Fossil 

 Plants have been all but entirely neglected. But it is not, it is 

 hoped, too late to mend, and perhaps this little Catalogue, by 

 shewing what was done in this town fifty years ago, may stir up 

 and awaken some one with the above-mentioned qualifications 

 to the importance of engaging in a pursuit which, from the new 

 ground to be examined, the novelties to be discovered, and the 

 valuable information to be derived from it, ought to make it 

 fascinating to many. 



The drawings from which the woodcuts were made are from 

 the pencil of my late friend and fellow-member, John Storey, 

 Esq. 



I cannot conclude this short introduction better than in the 

 remarkable words of Prof. Lindley, in the preface to the "Fossil 

 Flora," and which are as applicable to Fossil Botany in the 

 present day, notwithstanding all the researches that have been 

 made, as they were in the days of Lindley and Hutton, and 

 even more so. 



"It must always be remarked, that in this study, every one 

 is a mere beginner ; that he who has pursued it longest, is still 

 but on the very threshold of the science, and that we have only 

 just begun to clear away the impediments that accident and 

 ages have accumulated in our path. It is no wonder that errors 

 should be committed in such a pursuit. So perfectly hopeless 

 is it to escape them, that botanists have, probably, been deterred 

 from engaging in the enquiry, as much by a dread of tbe risk to 

 which their scientific reputation must necessarily be exposed, as 

 by the difficulty of the task itself. For ourselves, however, we 



