PART IV. 



FOSSIL BOTANY OR VEGETABLE PALiEONTOLOGY. 



The history of vegetation could not lie considered complete unless we 

 endeavoured to give some account, however brief, of the plants which 

 existed on the earth in its primeval state, during the extended geo- 

 logical epochs which elapsed before the establishment of the present 

 order of things. This subject is alike interesting to the botanist and 

 the geologist. It has sometimes been called Geo-Botany, and is an 

 important section of Oryctology (o^vxrog, dug out), or Pateontology 

 (ntaXwai, ancient, o'lra, beings). " Geology," Phillips says, " would 

 never, perhaps, have escaped from the domain of empiricism and con- 

 jecture, but for the innumerable testimonies of elapsed periods and 

 perished creations, which the stratified rocks of the globe present in 

 the remains of ancient plants and animals. So many important 

 questions concerning their nature, circumstances of existence, and 

 mode of inhumation in the rocks, have been suggested by these in- 

 teresting reliquiae, and the natural sciences have received so powerful 

 an impulse, and been directed with such great success to the solution 

 of problems concerning the past history of the earth, that we scarcely 

 feel disposed to dissent from the opinion, that without fossil Zoology 

 and Botany there would have been no true Geology." The stratified 

 crust of the globe is fuU of these monuments of vanished forms of life. 

 They are of various kinds, are in different states of preservation, and 

 occur very imequaUy in rocks of different kinds and ages. The 

 remains of ancient vegetation are very abundant in the Coal-measures, 

 the important combustible material derived from them, and which is 

 vegetable matter in an altered form. 



The vegetation of the globe, during the different stages of its 

 formation, has undergone very evident changes. The farther we 

 recede in geological history from the present day, the greater is the 

 difference between the fossil plants and those which now occupy 

 the surface. At the time when the coal-beds were formed, the 

 plants covering the earth belonged to genera and species not recog- 

 nised at the present day. As we ascend higher, the similarity 

 between the ancient and the modern flora increases, and in the latest 



