THE GEOLOGIST 



OCTOBER, 1859.. 



THE COMIVION FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 



By S. J. mcKiE, F,G.S., F.S.A.. 



(Continued from i^age 355.) 



Chap. 5. — First Traces of the Succession of Life. — The Loiver Sih.iricui 



BocJcs, 



For the Vegetable Kingdom it is impossible to g-ive any list composed 

 vdth the same degree of elaboratdon as has been attained in the 

 classification of animals. Modem plants are, it is true, as well 

 known and as correctly grouped as modern animal life-forms ; but 

 our knowledge of fossil botany is not at all equal to our knowledge 

 of fossil animals. The most minute divisions as well as the most 

 important of botanical classifications ai'e dependent upon the more 

 fully developed and most perishable parts of vegetable organisms — 

 the flowers and the fruits or seeds. Of these the former, the most 

 essential of all, have rarely indeed, if ever, been preserved. One or 

 two doubtful instances have been stated ; but these have been by 

 others disputed as being only incipient buds or leaflets, or as 

 accidental appearances, and the investigator of the extinct forms 

 of the vegetable creations of past geological ages has, at the best, to 

 infer from the remains of leaves, branches, or stems, usually more or 

 less decayed, the probable class to which the originals — often, 

 indeed generally, of very different structures and organic characters 

 from his existing types — belong. N"ot uncommonly, indeed, his only 

 guides are vague and indefinite resemblances of form, Still, how- 

 ever, if it be essential for the attainment of a knowledge of the exact 

 concatenation of past events in the succession of organic life on om^ 



VOL. II. I I 



