No. 544] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF AMEBIC A 



be referred to by number as by name, so long as they fill 

 the requirements above demanded, though of course every 

 stratigraphic paleontologist seeks to interpret to the very 

 best of his knowledge the fossils he studies. He may- 

 doubtless often does— make mistakes in his attempts to 

 understand them, but his errors are undoubtedly fewer 

 than he is not infrequently charged with! His faculty 

 of observation is rendered acute from the close study of 

 the restricted and often fragmentary material available, 

 and he has learned to see and make use of characters 

 which are often overlooked or wholly neglected by the 

 botanist. The latter, even when he has before him the 

 complete living plant, including root, stem and foliar and 

 reproductive organs, sometimes experiences difficulty in 

 correctly placing his subject, and, to judge from some 

 recent work, there are paleobotanists who study only the 

 internal structure of fossil plants and yet are beset with 

 extreme difficulty in interpreting their biological sig- 

 nificance. 



It may then be taken as settled that the needs of the 

 stratigraphic geologist will be met if he is supplied with 

 a series of marks or tokens by which he may unfailingly 

 identify the various geological horizons with which he 

 deals, while to the historical geologist who makes use of 

 fossils in unraveling the succession of geological events, 

 the correct biological identification is of the greatest im- 

 portance, for upon this rests his interpretation of the 

 succession of faunas and floras that have inhabited the 

 globe. As the late Dr. C. A. White has said : "If fossils 

 were to be treated only as mere tokens of the respective 

 formations in which they are found, their biological clas- 

 sification would be a matter of little consequence, but 

 their broad signification in historical geology, as well as 

 in systematic biology, renders it necessary that they be 

 classified as nearly as possible in the manner that living 

 animals and plants are classified." 



While it is in no wav desired to overlook or underesti- 

 mate the biologic value of such fossil plants as have for- 



