DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 23 



visit. David White had asked for a gentlemen's agreement that Jongmans (and 

 Bertrand) would not publish any new species based on their American collec- 

 tions without his knowledge and consent because White was preparing a com- 

 prehensive manuscript (still unpublished) including the descriptions of 

 nearly 15 new taxa. Jongmans serenely ignored this agreement and, with 

 Gothan, published a hasty, inaccurate list of species collected in America, 

 in which the names of about 15 nomina nuda were given. White was furious... 

 Paul Bertrand covered virtually the same ground. We got along well and I 

 learned a great deal from him too, especially my first introduction to his- 

 tologically preserved material. The impasse between these two men was the 

 boundary between the Westphalian and Stephanian. In my monograph I ex- 

 plained the nature of the controversy [Darrah, 1969]. You must remember 

 that in the late 1920s and early 1930s one could count on two hands the 

 paleobotanists in the United States. Bertrand' s major comment on American 

 paleobotany was that we needed more paleobotanists because our country was 

 so vast and there were so many problems to be undertaken. 



Hans Bode, a German paleobotanist, traveled extensively through the coal 

 basins of North America, including the Illinois Basin, in 1956. He was guided by 

 local geologists and collected fossils in many localities. Bode (1958) published a 

 paper on the floristic division of the Pennsylvanian in the United States, in which 

 he correlated the strata of all major coal basins in the United States with the Eur- 

 opean time stratigraphy. He criticized the floral zones of Read (1947), which were 

 made without regard to the previous work done in Europe, although Noe and Jong- 

 mans had shown earlier that the same floral zones were applicable in the United 

 States. Bode's older conception of the definition of the Westphalian D forced him 

 to assume that all higher beds belonged to the Westphalian D and that the Stepha- 

 nian was totally missing. Strata correlative to at least part of the Stephanian are 

 present in Illinois. 



Paleobotany in Indiana 



Paleobotany was introduced at Indiana University by James E. Canright, a 

 graduate of Harvard. Canright' s thesis work at Harvard, under the distinguished 

 anatomist I. W. Bailey, was on the comparative morphology of the Magnoliaceae. 

 His contributions on the stamens of living, primitive magnolialean flowers (Can- 

 right, 1952) are well known. Canright had already begun his thesis work when 

 Elso Barghoorn's first paleobotany course aroused his interest. In 1949 at Indiana 

 University he gave his first courses in anatomy and vascular plant morphology. 

 His first course in paleobotany was introduced 7 years later, and shortly after he 

 established the first palynology course. 



Canright' s experiences in 1954 at the Eighth International Botanical Con- 

 gress in Paris influenced his teaching program. He wrote: 



There I participated in the founding of the International Organization of 

 Paleobotany and attended most of the sessions of the newly-established 

 Palynology Section of the Congress. There I met such people as Hamshaw 

 Thomas, Tom Harris, Gothan, Jongmans, Leclercq, Erdtman, Krausel, Cookson, 

 etc. This experience, together with my fossil plant experience in Indiana 

 caused me to inaugurate a course in paleobotany at Indiana University in 

 1956. C. E. Wier, G. K. Guennel, A. S. Horowitz, and Marcia R. Winslow 

 were among the many geologists who took my course; Guennel worked on the 

 macro- and micro-fossils of the Indiana paper coal for his Ph.D. with me 

 [Neavel and Guennel, i960; Guennel and Neavel, 1961]. Don Engelhardt came 



