William Crawford Williamson, LL.B., F.B.S. 447 



they describe or delineate is the result of laborious 

 collecting, of skilful and painstaking preparation of slices, 

 of careful scrutiny under the microscope, of thoughtful 

 study and comparison, of nice and accurate drawing, and, 

 finally, of lucid description and scientific interpretation. 



No man had a better title to indulge in large ^enerali- 

 zations respecting the origin and development of the 

 vegetable kingdom, but he rarely referred to such sub- 

 jects, except now and then in conversation or in private 

 letters. He usually, like the greater naturalists of our 

 time, displayed in these matters that modesty which 

 attends on wide knowledge, and leaves hasty and pre- 

 sumptuous theories to those who are inflated with a little 

 wisdom and fail to realize how small it is. He ex- 

 pressed, some years ago, his position in one respect by 

 saying that the time had not yet come for constructing a 

 genealogical tree of the vegetable kinodom: and in his 

 address as president of the Geological Section at the South- 

 port meeting of the British Association, after discussing 

 in some detail the various types of fossil vegetation, and 

 insisting that if the Carboniferous and Devonian floras 

 were evolved from pre-existing types, we have to look for 

 these in rocks which have afforded no trace of land vege- 

 tation, he refers to the few places in which Carboniferous 

 plants with well preserved structures are found, and the 

 wonderful revelations which these have afforded. He 

 then sums up as follows : 



" Hence I conclude that there is a vast variety of Carboniferous 

 plants of which we have as yet seen no traces, but every one of which 

 must have played some part, however humble, in the development of 

 the plant races of later ages. We can only hope that time will bring 

 these now hidden treasures into the hands of future palaeontologists. 

 Meanwhile, though far from wishing to check the construction of any 

 legitimate hypothesis calculated to aid scientific inquiry, I would re- 

 mind every too-ambitious student that there is a haste that retards 

 rather than promotes progress, that arouses opposition rather than 

 produces conviction, and that injures the cause of science by dis- 

 crediting its advocates. "* 



* British Association Report, 18S3. 



