t8o The U^est American Sciejiiist. 



pleasure which the trip affords were well known, the opportunity 

 to enjoy it would not be missed for any slight reason by our set- 

 tled residents, or by the transient visitor to our coast. 



Josiah Keep. 

 August lo, 1887. 



FOSSIL BOTANY. 



BY DR. LORENZO G. YATES. 



Fossil Botany is a subject of great importance to all who are in- 

 terested in the ancient history of our planet. 



To the geologist who, from the study of the fossil vegetation, 

 its condition, situation and surroundings is enabled to describe 

 the orographic geography of a region, illustrating to him the 

 character of the soil, and the waters flowing in and through it 

 furnishes the principal and only reliable aid in the determination 

 of the geological age of the rocks in which the remains are found 

 imbedded; together with many other important facts necessary to 

 the proper reading of the "testimony of the rocks." 



To the botanist and horticulturist, it is, or should be of special 

 interest, showing as it does, the progress of the evolution and 

 succession of plant life during the earlier ages of the world, and 

 enabling him to read a history which nature has compiled, and 

 written for the instruction of its students. 



While human chronicles are not only insignificant as compared 

 with the time covered by geological evidences, they are also im- 

 perfect and erroneous; nature's chronicles may be fragmentary, 

 but they have the merit of accuracy. ' 



Any person who has looked through the large end of a telescope 

 will have a vivid recollection of the appearance of objects seen 

 with the instrument so reversed; things which are comparatively 

 near to the observer, will appear to be distant, but will have a 

 peculiarly distinct outline, and the same clearness is apparent in 

 distant objects seen through the same medium. So it is with 

 geology and its allied sciences; the student may, by reversing the 

 geological or historical telescope see and read clearly, the history 

 of plant life down the long vista of past ages. The fo'^sil remains 

 of plants and animals which lived in unknown numbers of ages 

 past, defined and well preserved as those of the least remote period. 



He may first feast his imagination upon the beauty and luxuri- 

 ance of the Pliocene forests, as the least remote, and most nearly 

 resembling those of the present age. 



Having studied out the fragments of wood and leaves of trees, 

 we place them in their several positions in the scale of plant life, 

 finding among them undoubted remnants of magnificent palms, 

 those noble children of the earth and sun. The eucalyptus, which 

 we were supposed to have first introduced into California from the 



