SKETCH OF paleobotany; 



Bv Lestee F. Ward. 



I— ON THE TERM "PALEOBOTANY." 



The term paleobotany has the advantage of brevity over the more 

 commoii expressions vegetable paleontology and phytopaleontology, while 

 at the same time its etymologic derivation from two purely Greek words 

 renders it equally legitimate. Still, neither of the other terms should 

 be entirely discarded. While it is always necessary to use the specific 

 term for the science of fossil plants, the practice of employing the ge- 

 neric term paleontology when treating of animal remains only seems ob- 

 jectionable. The corresponding term paleozoology should be recognized, 

 and used whenever the more restricted expressions vertebrate paleon- 

 tology and invertebrate paleontology are inapplicable. It is thus only 

 that the terminology of the science becomes consistent and itself sci- 

 entific. 



II.— INTERRELATIONS OF GEOLOGY AND BIOLOGY. 



The science of paleontology has two objects, the one geologic, the 

 other biologic. The history of the earth is to a large extent the history 

 of its life, and the record which organic life leaves constitutes the prin- 

 cipal index to the age of its successive strata. In paleozoology this 

 record is implicitly relied upon and forms the solid foundation of geo- 

 logical science. In paleobotany so much cannot be said, yet it too has 

 already rendered valuable service to geology, and is often the only guide 

 furnished by nature to the solntion of important problems. 



The contribution that paleontology thus makes to the history of the 

 earth — to geology — is not more interesting than that which it makes to 

 the history of the earth's life — to biology. No questions are more en- 

 grossing, nor in fact more practically important for man as one of the 

 living forms developed on the earth, than those that pertain to the origin 

 and development of the various forms of life, and a knowledge of the 

 past life of the globe is that by which we are enabled to understand its 



> Being a preliminary draft of a portion of the introduction to a "Compendium of 



Paleobotany," in preparation. 



363 



