WAED.] BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 373 



scription of the great Carboniferous tree found in the quarries of Craig- 

 leith, and for other similar investigations. One of his principal works 

 is entitled " The Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables found in the 

 Carboniferous and Oolitic Deposits of Great Britain, described and il- 

 lustrated," Edinburgh, 1833. The illustrations are numerous and well 

 executed, and form a secure basis for all subsequent researches of the 

 kind. 



6. Gojapert. — Heinrich Eobert Goppert, of Breslau, who was born in 

 the year 1800 and who has died since this sketch was first drafted, was 

 the most voluminous writer upon fossil plants that has been produced 

 thus far. In his " Literarische Arbeiten," prepared by himself in 1881, 

 one hundred distinct works, memoirs, and papers are enumerated relat- 

 ing to this subject, and several have appeared since. Nearly an equal 

 number relate to living plants, and a few to medicine, which was his pro- 

 fession. But his work in vegetable paleontology exceeds by far all his 

 other works in its value to science, embracing as it does many large 

 treatises on the Paleozoic flora ("Flora der Uebergangsgebirge"), on the 

 amber flora, on the fossil Coniferse, on the fossil ferns, etc. Especially 

 important has been his microscopic work upon the structure of various 

 kinds of fossil woods, particularly those of the Coniferae and the Dicotyl- 

 edons. Endowed with the true German devotion to his specialty, with 

 keen observing and analytic powers, with a restless activity, exceptional 

 opportunities, and long life, he was able to create for the science a vast 

 wealth of new facts and give it a solid body of laboriously wrought 

 truth. If Bronguiart laid the foundations of paleobotany, Goppert may 

 properly be said to have built its superstructure. Though born one 

 year earlier than Bronguiart, he did not turn his attention to fossil plants 

 until the latter had been twelve years in that field. His first pajier ap- 

 peared in 1834, or just a half century ago.* It was historical in its 

 character. Like many other men who have been destined for a great 

 career, he began it by taking a bird's-eye view of his subject. He did 

 not despise the literature of his predecessors, even though they groped 

 in the darkness of medieval ignorance. With patriotic pride he first told 

 the story of his own countrymen's attempts to elucidate the flora of the 

 ancient world, although even in this paper, he by no means confined 

 himself to the limits of Silesia, and two years later he published a 

 great expansion of this historical research as an introduction to his 

 first great work.'' 



No attempt within our present limits of space to convey an idea 

 of the true merits of Goppert's services to paleobotany could hojje to do 

 them justice, and we can only point to the monument he has himself 



«Ueber die Bestrebuugen der Schlesier die Flora der Vorwelt zu erlautern. Schle- 

 ■ sische Provincialbiatter, August und September 1834. Also in Karsten und Dechen's 

 Archiv, Band VIII, 1835, pp. 232-249. 



' Systema filioum fossilium : Die fossilen Farnkranter. Nov. Act. Acad. Cses. Leop. 

 Car., Tom. XVII, suppl., pp. 1-76. 



