370 SKETCH OF PALEOBOTANY. 



A brief biographical sketch including the mention of some of the 

 more important contributions of each of the above-named paleobotanists 

 may now be made. 



1. /Sc/ie«c7i^er.— Switzerland, which furnished one of the last and 

 greatest of all the cultivators of this science who have now passed 

 away, furnished also the first name that can with any true propriety 

 be placed in the list of paleobotanists. Although he wrote on many 

 other subjects, and worked in some very different fields, the paleon- 

 tological works of Scheuchzei' are the only ones that possess any 

 enduring value, and although he did not confine his studies to vege- 

 table fossils, he still gave these a much larger share of his attention 

 than they now receive from paleontologists in general, compared to 

 that which is bestowed by them upon the other forms of extinct life. 

 He was born at Ziirich in 1672, and died in the same city in 1733. 

 He traveled quite extensively and made large collections of all 

 kinds of curiosities, -which he described and figured in numerous 

 works. He regarded all fossils as relics of the l^oachian deluge, and 

 gained a permanent place in the history of science by describing the 

 bones of a gigantic salamander as "Homo diluvii testis." His most 

 imi)ortant work was his " Herbarium diluvianum," first published at 

 Ziirich in 1709, but thoroughly revised and republished at Leydeu 

 in 1723. In this work many fossil plants are figured with sufficient 

 accuracy for identification. Several of Scheucbzer's other works con- 

 tain mention of fossil plants, particularly his " Museum diluvianum" 

 (1716), and his " Oryctographia helvetica" (in Part III of the "Hel- 

 vetise historia naturalis," 1716-18), but their value to the science, as 

 indeed that of all his writings, is now chiefly historical. When, how- 

 ever, we consider that Scheuchzer antedated by almost a full century 

 the earliest properly scientific treatises on paleobotany, we are prepared 

 to overlook his deficiencies, and to regard him as the true precursor of 

 the science. 



2. Schlotheim. — Ernst Friedrich, Baron von 8chlotheim, of Gotha, 

 whose career began with the first years of the present century, is the 

 second name that stands out prominently in the history of paleobotany. 

 Not that there had not been many in the course of the long century 

 which separates him from Scheuchzer who had interested themselves in 

 the study of fossil plants, and who collectively had accumulated the data 

 which rendered the work of Schlotheim possible, but to him is due the 

 credit of first marshaling the evidence from vegetable remains in support 

 of a true science of geology. A sketch of the early struggles and final 

 triumph of strictly scientific principles as drawn from paleontology will 

 presently be presented from the phytological side, and we may therefore 

 content ourselves here with mentioning the grounds upon which Schlot- 

 heim's claims rest to a place in the present enumeration. 



Born at Almenhausen (Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) in 1764, and 

 educated at Gottingen and Freiburg, he took up the study of mineralogy 



