24 LL. Lesquereux on the Coal Formations of the United States. 
give a general view of the fossil flora of the coal. Many of our 
ommon American species are found described and figured in it. 
It is indispensable to the student. Prof. Geinitz seems to have 
taken a point of view entirely different from that of Géppert and 
th, I believe, have gone too far; this one by multiplying the 
genera and the species, without characters always sufficient; the 
other in uniting into one some species certainly distinct. The 
work of Geinitz is entirely in German. It is to be regretted 
that it does not give at least a short Latin description for each 
generic diagnosis. Goldenberg appears to be one of those true 
men of science who spend their time in the mines exam- 
much for the Botany of the Coal measures, that truly his works 
are beyond comparison and imitation. What a pity that his 
great Histoire des Vegetaux Fossiles has not yet been and probably 
will never be finished! The last part delivered to science was 
printed, [ think, in 1844. When we look to the details of his 
comparative botanical anatomy, to the admirable clearness of his 
classification, to the exactness of his descriptions and of the 
ures, to every part of his great work, we cannot be aston- _ 
ished that every attempt at classification and description of fossil 
plants is done in imitation of Brongniart’s method, the true 
foundation of the science. His observations on the structure of Si- 
gillaria elegans is a work of anatomical study that is equalled only 
by that of Dr. Hooker’s on the structure of the Lepidostrobi, in 
the memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Besides 
these remarkable works, and among numerous memoirs of Brong- 
niart, the Tableau des Genres des Vegetaux Fossiles, and the Pro- 
drome d’une Histoire des Vegetaux Fossiles will be studied and — 
