Paleobotany and Zoology. 235 



3. The Present Position of Palceozoic Botany ; by D. H. 

 Scott. Progressus Rei Botanicae (Progress of Botany. Verlag 

 von Gustav Fischer in Jena), 1906, Bel. I, pp. 139-217, with 37 

 figures in text. — This extensive review by Dr. Scott will be found 

 almost indispensable, recording as it does the significant advances 

 made in the most important division of the nevjest branch of 

 paleontology, — Paleobotany. Likewise some of the great gaps 

 in our knowledge of fossil plants and consequent fields of inquiry 

 are pointed out. 



It is only within the past dozen years that the study of the 

 fossil plant record has assumed primary importance; and to-day, 

 as must be apparent to anyone who surveys the field of biologic 

 data, it is clear that in furnishing proof of the course of evolu- 

 tion, paleobotanic evidence possesses inherent value equal to that 

 afforded either by the invertebrates or the vertebrates. 



g. r. w. 



4. The Seed, a Chapter in Evolution ; by F. W. Oliver. 

 Presidential Address to the Botanical Section, British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science. Report, York meeting, 

 1906, pp. 1-14. — Every botanist will find this address of an 

 extreme interest, which passes wholly beyond the limits of our 

 brief notice. The evolution of the seed was one of the most 

 pregnant new departures ever inaugurated by plants. Conquest 

 of the ancient world was as now slow in those earlier stages as 

 yet only glimpsed in the Pteridosperms. The far-flung forests 

 of Lepidodendrons and Calamites were not at once reduced to 

 Lycopods without a struggle ; for Pepidocarpon shows a great, 

 if ineffectual, advance in the direction taken by the eventual 

 victors. Probably seed plants asserted themselves wherever phys- 

 ical changes overwhelmed old habitats ; just as with more pro- 

 nounced dominance of the angiosperms, a future age may have 

 to content itself with dwarf gymnosperms like those the Japan- 

 ese are so fond of producing in their pot-cultivations. 



In glancing back at the earliest seed structures thus far dis- 

 covered one is struck by their complexity. The pollen chamber, 

 the large elaborate integument, and the complicated vascular 

 arrangements, all these earlier improvisations and incidental fea- 

 tures, protective or otherwise, have passed away or ended in 

 essentially simpler but more exact structural devices. Once 

 universal, aquatic fertilization has yielded to xerophyllous 

 siphonogamy. Instead of sperms discharged into a water cham- 

 ber abutting the archegonia, male cells are now carried through 

 a plastic tube to the egg ; as Professor Oliver graphically puts 

 it, much as we now journey from Baker Street to Waterloo with 

 accuracy and despatch by a sub-potamian tunnel, whereas our 

 primitive ancestors first penetrated the forest and then swam 

 the river ! Seeds, in short, are in their nearer aspects the adjust- 

 ment of filicinean organs to intraseminal limits, and in their far 

 broader significance the response of the plant to the genesis of 

 seasonal periodicity from aquatic generalized tropical conditions. 



G. R. w. 



