14 ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 480 



them to one end of the rope and we tied the other end to a car and lifted 

 the balls out that way. It proved to be wonderful material. 



Noe published many short notes on coal balls, mostly lists of the taxa 

 found at various localities and stratigraphic horizons, with occasional summaries 

 of progress in coal-ball studies and reports of new coal-ball discoveries (Noe, 

 1922a, 1925a, 1934a, b, 1935; Fisher and Noe, 1938). 



Noe's (1923c) first and only paper on the anatomy of American coal-ball 

 plants, entitled A Paleozoic Angio sperm , was a nearly disastrous beginning for 

 American studies. The first description of plants from coal balls in the Harris- 

 burg (No. 5) Coal Member acquired at the O'Gara Mine was given by J. Hobart 

 Hoskins (1923). Hoskins, who was one of Noe's most successful students in 

 coal-ball studies, mistook the frond anatomy of Myeloxylon , an organ genus be- 

 longing to the seed fern (pteridosperm) stem Medullosa , for a monocotyledon stem 

 that has scattered collateral bundles superficially similar to a corn stem. Hoskins 

 named the plant Angiospermophyton americanum . Noe" (19 2 3c) unfortunately repro- 

 duced two figures from Hoskins' paper and endorsed the discovery. Angiosperms, 

 or flowering plants, have not been identified with certainty in rocks older than 

 Cretaceous. Seward (1923) pointed out the misinterpretation. 



Noe's Influence on Paleobotanists 



Noe", in addition to his own work on coal balls, furthered coal- ball inves- 

 tigation by supplying significant research material to his students, encouraging 

 their efforts, and providing an interesting and pioneering atmosphere. He was al- 

 so generous to paleobotanists who visited the Illinois Basin. C. A. Arnold wrote 

 of his acquaintance with Noe: 



I first met him in 1926 when he attended the 4th International Botanical 

 Congress held at Cornell University. I was about midway in my career as a 

 graduate student at Cornell at the time, and we struck up a friendship that 

 lasted until he died. After I came to the University of Michigan in 1928, 

 I visited him a couple of times in Chicago. With his large build, steel- 

 gray hair, penetrating eyes, thick mustache that overarched a wide mouth, 

 and a scar on his cheek, the result of a duel during his younger days, he 

 did not fit his kind, congenial, and generous disposition.... it was during 

 one of these visits that he gave me some coal balls. He led me to the pile 

 and told me to help myself. When I glanced toward him, he had purposely 

 turned his back to me so I would not think I was being watched. It was in 

 that group of coal balls that Steidtmann and I later found Medullosa noei 

 and Rotodontiospermum illinoense [Arnold and Steidtmann, 1937; Steidtmann, 

 1937, 1944; see also Stewart, 1954]. 



One of Noe's objectives in paleobotany was expressed in an address in 

 192 7, "If I develop six, eight, or ten new paleobotanists, then I shall have done 

 all and more than I could have hoped for. It is a science not many need follow, 

 but it has a place and use. " 



Indeed, Noe*'s paleobotanical contributions were extended by means of his 

 students. J. Hobart Hoskins became Head of the Botany and Bacteriology Depart- 

 ment at the University of Cincinnati; Roy Graham was a geologist and paleobotan- 

 ist before he died, in the same year as Noe, in a rock fall in British Columbia at 

 the age of 31; Fredda D. Reed, who helped section the coal balls from the O'Gara 

 No. 9 Mine, continued her coal-ball studies at Mount Holyoke College and became 

 head of the Botany Department there; Harriet V. Krick [Bartoo] taught at Western 



