14 RELATION OF PALAEOBOTANY TO BOTANY AND GEOLOGY. [CH. 



geological age; this again, is no doubt to a large extent the 

 result of imperfect and inaccurate methods of description, and 

 of the neglect of and consequent imperfect acquaintance with 

 fossil plants as compared with fossil animals. 



The student of fossil plants should endeavour to keep before 

 him the fact that the chief object of his work is to deal with the 

 available material in the most natural and scientific manner ; and 

 by adopting the methods of modern botany, he should always aim 

 to follow such lines as may best preserve the continuity of past 

 and present types of plants. Descriptions of floras of past ages 

 and lists of fossil species, should be so compiled that they may 

 serve the same purpose to a stratigraphical geologist, who is 

 practically a geographer of former periods of the Earth's history, 

 as the accounts of existing floras to students of present day 

 physiography. The effect of carrying out researches on some 

 such lines as these, should be to render available to both 

 botanists and geologists the results of the specialist's work. 



In some cases, palaeobotanical investigations may be of the 

 utmost service to botanical science, and of little or no value to 

 geology. The discovery of a completely preserved gametophyte 

 of Lepidodendron or Calamites, or of a petrified Moss plant in 

 Palaeozoic rocks would appeal to most botanists as a matter of 

 primary importance, but for the stratigraphical geologist such 

 discoveries would possess but little value. On the other hand 

 the discovery of some characteristic species of Coal-Measure 

 plants from a deep boring through Mesozoic or Tertiary strata 

 might be a matter of special geological importance, but to the 

 botanist it would be of no scientific value. In very many 

 instances, however, if the palaeobotanist follows such lines as 

 have been briefly suggested, the results of his labours should be 

 at once useful and readily accessible to botanists and geologists. 

 As Humboldt has said in speaking of Palaeontology, "the 

 analytical study of primitive animal and vegetable life has 

 taken a double direction ; the one is purely morphological, and 

 embraces especially the natural history and physiology of 

 organisms, filling up the chasms in the series of still living 

 species by the fossil structures of the primitive world. The 

 second is more specially geognostic, considering fossil remains 



