No. 544] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 227 



part of the credit of putting paleobotany on a really 

 satisfactory footing. He insisted on the absolute neces- 

 sity of taking into consideration internal structure as 

 well as external form, and went so far in some of his 

 writings as to state that imprints or impressions alone, 

 of extinct plants, had little scientific value. What may 

 be called the evolutionary bias of Englishmen, a fortu- 

 nate inheritance from the greatest of all biologists, 

 Charles Darwin, has led them far in the pursuit of paleo- 

 botany on anatomical lines. We need only call to mind 

 the demonstration on anatomical grounds that the 

 greater part of the trees of the Coal Period were, in spite 

 of their arboreal habit, in reality vascular cryptogams, 

 a demonstration absolutely confirmed later when it was 

 possible to study, in detail, their reproductive organs. 

 An even more striking illustration of the same kind is 

 supplied by some of the fern-like forms of the Paleozoic, 

 which have long appeared in the catalogue as vascular 

 cryptogams. Here too it was first shown on anatomical 

 grounds, and afterwards from the examination of the or- 

 ganization of the reproductive structures, that outward 

 appearances were entirely deceptive and that the organ- 

 isms in question were in reality seed plants of a prim- 

 itive type. These two illustrations, which might be in- 

 definitely multiplied, serve to indicate the very impor- 

 tant services which the study of internal organization 

 has rendered both to the natural system and to the doc- 

 aphorism of mundane existence, which admonishes us 

 not to trust to appearances, holds equally well in the 

 domain of plants. Paleobotany, like morphology, lias 

 accordingly at the present time entered into the anatom- 

 ical phase of development. 



So long as morphology concerned itself mainly with 

 the external form of the reproductive structures of exist- 

 ing plants and paleobotany had perforce to content itself 

 for the most part with the impressions upon the rocks 

 of the foliar organs of extinct ones, there was little to 



