INTRODUCTION. V 



the Geologist will be no longer constrained, upon pain of incurring the charge of 

 irreligion, to adopt the ancient Chaldean cosmogony further than may be con- 

 sistent with more recent and careful observation. 



It is not by publishing detached and unconnected delineations and descriptions 

 of fossil plants, as they occasionally occur, that the knowledge of them can be 

 considerably promoted. A systematic arrangement must be formed, and the first 

 step to this is the accurate determination of the species. Hoc opus, hie labor est. 



It will be seen in the course of this Work how easy it would be to imagine 

 even parts of the same specimen to be different species, when they happen to be 

 broken and dispersed. The author may confidently assert, that in at least a thou- 

 sand different specimens which he has in his possession, he does not apprehend 

 that more than a hundred different species can be recognised. Furthermore, still 

 fewer indeed can be referred to any living species ; for it is not the fern-like leaf of 

 a plant, the palm-like cicatrix, or the cane-like joint of a stem, that will suffice to 

 identify them with those tribes of the vegetable kingdom. The whole Anatomy of 

 the Plant must be studied. The subject has indeed been begun by Professor 

 Martius, in his comparison of certain fossil stems of plants with those of the living 

 plants growing in the Brazils ; but the study is as yet too new to afford certain 

 results. Accordingly, several of that professor's opinions are at variance with those 

 of M. Adolphe Brongniart, who has also compared the recent and fossil vegetables 

 together on this plan. But by following up this comparison, which has been so 

 successfully adopted by Baron Cuvier in the study of fossil animals,* similar results 

 may be expected ; and a knowledge of the extinct plants be at length attained. 



The following abstract of the systems of Baron Schlotheim, Count Sternberg, 



* Having mentioned the name of Cuvier, the author cannot refrain from observing that by Cuvier's 

 extensive comparisons between the skeletons of recent and fossil animals, he has shewn the analogy which 

 exists between them; that animals very similar to the present races existed in a former world, and that, 

 even in this island, evident traces have been left of their residence here, though at a more remote period 

 than has been imagined. 



The various caverns which have been explored throughout Europe, have shewn that elephants, hippo- 

 potami, rhinoceroses, and hyenas, were natives of this part of the world ; and at a period probably not far 

 distant from the time of that desolating current which excavated the vallies and bore away the forests. 



The fossil remains of some animals, however, which have been collected in the British Islands, as well 

 as in other parts of Europe, are in all probability of postdiluvian origin, although the living animals of 

 some species of them are no longer to be found — as those of the gigantic Irish elk, and several other 

 species of deer, the horse, ox, boar, wolf, fox and beaver. 



Of these animals, four are no longer known to exist in the British Islands, namely the Irish elk, the 

 wolf, the boar, and the beaver. 



Although we have scarcely any other evidence of the existence of the Irish elk as a postdiluvian ani- 



