WAKD.] NOMENCLATURE AND CLASSIFICATION. 425 



hand, if it has not already come, when this wide acquaintance with the 

 ancient floras of the globe, if properly organized for study, will afford 

 such aid to geological investigation as to command recognition, while 

 the lessons which it supplies to the botanist and the biologist will be 

 inestimable. 



VIII. NOMENCIiATURE AND CliASSIFICATIOlSr OF FOSSIL 



PLANTS. 



Science does not consist in names, but it cannot well progress without 

 them, and early in the history of every science a system of nomenclature 

 always arises. Again, a knowledge of natural objects consists largely 

 in a knowledge of their relations, to obtain which systematic attempts 

 at their methodical arrangement are among the first steps. However 

 humble such efforts may at first be, they nevertheless constitute the 

 beginnings of scientific classification. The objects may be arranged 

 before names are given to them or to the groups they are seen to form, 

 as in Bernard de Jussieu's Garden of the Trianon. But usually the 

 naming either precedes or closely accompanies the process of arrange- 

 ment. Such at least has been the case with fossil plants. This fact, 

 however, is to be here considered : That the science of botany proper 

 antedated by far that of paleobotany. A few names were given to 

 vegetable remains during the period when nobody believed that they 

 either were themselves plants or represented plants. The reaction 

 from this view, which took place at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, in favor of the diluvian theory, carried its votaries much too 

 far, and led them to think that every fossil plant must represent 

 some known living one. This extremism had its fitting exemplifica- 

 tion in Scheuchzer's now obviously ridiculous attempt to classify the 

 fossil plants of his time under the same rubrics as the living plants. 

 The timely appearance of Tournefort's "fil6mens de Botanique," in 

 1694, in which about the first real system of botanical classification 

 was drawn up, afforded Scheuchzer the desired opportunity, and with- 

 out waiting for the appearance of a second edition of his " Herbarium 

 diluvianum,^' he hastened to arrange all his species under Tournefort's 

 twenty-one classes, and published them, in 1816, in his " Oryctographia 

 Helvetise" (pp. 203-247). In spite of his zeal, however, a large residue 

 of unassigned fossil plants remained as a special " Class unkantlicher 

 Gewachsen oder dero Theilen, welche uns von der Siindfluth ubrigge- 

 blieben" (p. 236). This attempt was continued in the Editio novissima 

 of the "Herbarium diluvianum," published in 1723 (Appendix). 



In this rash scheme Scheuchzer was not followed. Lhwyd, in 1699, 

 had applied the term Lithoxylon to fossil wood, which, with the ex- 

 ception of the impressions described by Major, mentioned on p. 389 

 {swpra), was the only form of vegetable fossil known down to his time. 



