DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 27 



spent several summers at the University of Chicago to obtain research material; 

 she also worked with coal balls provided by Schopf and with Iowa coal balls 

 loaned from Harvard University by Barghoorn. 



J. Hobart Hoskins and one of his students, Aureal T. Cross, prepared some 

 of the earliest generic monographs on coal-ball plants in the United States, inclu- 

 ding those on Bowmanites (Sphenophyllum cones) and Paohytesta (pteridosperm 

 seeds) (Hoskins and Cross, 1943a, 1946a, b) . Plants from coal balls found in the 

 Danville (No. 7) Coal from the Hegler Zinc Company Mine, Danville, Illinois, were 

 described in Hoskins' doctoral thesis and in later papers (Hoskins, 1926, 1933). 

 Most of his publications on Illinois coal balls, however (1926, 1928a, b, 1930, 

 1931, 1934), gave only the "McLeansboro Formation" and no locality data. 



Two of Hoskins' students contributed significantly to paleobotanical 

 studies of the Illinois Basin and adjacent areas, Cross and Maxine L. Abbott, 

 both of whom later served on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati . Abbott, 

 Hoskins' last student, continued her studies of compressions at Cincinnati. She 

 produced monographs on ferns, sphenopsids, and lycopods (Abbott, 1954, 1958, 

 1963, and 1968) that included some specimens from the Illinois Basin. 



Krick's doctoral thesis, part of which was published in the Botanical Gaz- 

 ette (1932), had, she told us, the following genesis: 



In several of the Harrisburg coal balls which we were sectioning, I hap- 

 pened to run across several good specimens and I was naturally intrigued 

 with what to call them. I got around the question by calling them — seed - 

 like fructifications . The question as to why no embryos were present, al- 

 though otherwise the structure was well preserved, came up. As far as I 

 know, I was the first to write about them. 



A promising young geologist attracted into paleobotany by Noe was Roy 

 Graham from Staffordshire, England. Graham was a fellowship student at the 

 University of Chicago from 1931 to 1933 and in his research relied heavily on E. 

 J. Kraus, who was a well known plant anatomist. Graham's publications (1934, 

 1935a), based on his doctoral dissertation, dealt exclusively with coal-ball plants 

 from the Calhoun Coal and exhibited great promise. The following year Graham ac- 

 cepted a National Research Fellowship that enabled him to study for a year at Cam- 

 bridge University with A. C. Seward. Graham then became an instructor in geol- 

 ogy at the University of British Columbia, working in the summers with the Cana- 

 dian Geological Survey until 1937, when he became a mine geologist at the Britannia 

 Mining and Smelting Company in Britannia, British Columbia. He was killed there 

 in a rock fall in 1939 (Bastin, 1940). Graham's last contribution on plants from 

 the Illinois Basin was in 1935 (1935b) . In his publications on the Calhoun flora, 

 he described a number of new taxa and provided insight into the differences be- 

 tween the younger American coal-ball flora and the lower We stphalian A coal-ball 

 flora of western Europe. 



The J. H. Hoskins Memorial Paleobotanical Collections, originally ar- 

 ranged by Abbott, are now in the Geology Department at the University of Cincin- 

 nati, where Richard A. Davis is curator. Type and figured slides of coal-ball 

 plants described by Graham and others from the Nod collection are preserved at 

 the Illinois Geological Survey in Urbana. 



Illinois State Geological Survey Studies 



The 1930s were formative years in all branches of paleobotany in the Illi- 

 nois Basin, and the Illinois State Geological Survey provided significant leader- 

 ship and pioneering, especially through the contributions of James M. Schopf. 



