DEVELOPMENT OF PALEOBOTANY IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN 7 



types in a catalog of the illustrated Paleozoic plant specimens deposited in the 

 U.S. National Museum (Watt, 1970). 



After the original Geological Survey of Illinois closed in 1875, little prog- 

 ress in paleobotany was made in Illinois until the turn of the century. Of consider- 

 able importance, however, was the establishment in Springfield of a Natural His- 

 tory Museum in 1877 with Worthen as curator. Of equal importance to paleon- 

 tology, as well as to other natural sciences, both then and now, is the sustained 

 support for such institutions, which preserve and encourage the study of specimens 

 of the earth's natural resources. 



Worthen' s experiences as curator were frustrating; the collections were 

 moved seven times between 1851 and 1888, and, shortly before his death, in spite 

 of his protests and during his absence from Springfield, the museum specimens 

 were moved to the basement of the State House, where they became encumbered 

 with trash. Worthen' s successor as curator, Josua Lindahl, wrote (in Crook, 

 1907), "I devoted years of assiduous work to save what could be saved. " 



Lindahl was asked to provide a geological exhibit for the World's Colum- 

 bian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The state bought, to serve as part of the 

 exhibit, the Worthen private collection, and specialists in paleontology were 

 asked to provide taxonomic determinations and descriptions for the various groups 

 of fossils. Charles David White of the U. S. Geological Survey was asked to re- 

 vise all the Illinois collections of fossil plants. His observations of the Illinois 

 display specimens for the Exposition provided a basis for appraisal of the Illinois 

 floras. The printed labels for the display specimens are now in the collections of 

 the Illinois State Geological Survey and the Illinois State Museum. White wrote 

 a report, but, "in the confusion unavoidably accompanying the closing days" of 

 the Exposition, this report and the reports on invertebrate paleontology were lost 

 (Lindahl, 1893) . The Worthen collection was given to the University of Illinois, 

 and the State collection was returned to Springfield. 



E. H. Sellards 



Pioneering studies of spores and prepollen from the compression flora of 

 the Mazon Creek area were made by E. H. Sellards (1902a, 1903) and included 

 descriptions of fructifications and spores of Crossotheoa, Myriotheoa , fertile 

 pecopterids, and a new genus, Codonotheoa. 



Sellards was studying at Yale University, and the contribution on Codono- 

 theoa, a portion of his doctoral dissertation suggesting the relationship of the 

 fructification to the Cycadofilicales, appeared the year before the noted discovery 

 and recognition of the Cycadofilicales as seed ferns by Frank W. Oliver in England 

 (Oliver and Scott, 1904). 



Charles David White 



In 1905 the present Illinois State Geological Survey was organized, and 

 Charles David White, then Honorary Curator of Paleobotany of the U.S. National 

 Museum, came to Illinois and worked with the new Survey during the summers 

 from 1906 to 1908. White, a native of New York, had joined the U. S. Geological 

 Survey in 1886 as a paleobotanical illustrator after receiving his undergraduate 



