INTERNAL STRUCTURE 



OF 



FOSSIL VEGETABLES. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The interesting subject of Fossil Vegetation has at length attracted 

 the attention of many of the most ingenious and learned botanists of 

 Europe, whose investigations have thrown considerable light on the nature 

 of those remains of the ancient flora of our globe, which, but a few years 

 ago, seemed destined to remain for ever in obscurity. To me it has always 

 presented peculiar charms, and my efforts to elucidate those objects which 

 fell under my observation have been so far successful, as to induce me to 

 continue them with unremitted diligence. Some of the results of my la- 

 bours were published in 1831, in a work entitled Observations on Fossil 

 Vegetables ; others have been communicated to the public in the Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and those of the Newcastle Natural 

 History Society. Those which I have since obtained, I have judged it ex- 

 pedient to add to the former, and I now present the whole in connection to 

 my friends, and such persons as may feel an interest in the subject. 



My pretensions to botanical knowledge are indeed very limited ; nor do I 

 presume to rank myself among the cultivators of a science to which so many 

 eminent individuals have devoted themselves in this country. The only 

 object I have always steadily kept in view, is to direct their attention to a 

 department of botany which has hitherto been too much neglected ; for, al- 

 though the study of the external forms of the stems, leaves, and fructifica- 



