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and vegetables ? these questions cannot be satisfactorily 
answered but by a series of specimens. 
Botany — 
In fossil botany we have more need of a large assemblage 
of specimens than for the successful study of ichthyology or 
conchology ; the investigation of this branch of science is 
attended with great difficulty. The materials at the disposal 
of a student of fossil botany, are not only disarranged by 
accidents which appear to have occurred to all other fossil 
remains, but they are those which would in recent vegetation 
be considered of little importance. There is an entire want 
of all those data which guide a botanist in the examination 
of recent plants. Not only the total absence of the parts of 
fructification and the entire destruction of the internal 
organization of the stem, but a frequent separation of the 
various parts, (as branches from trunks, and leaves from 
branches,) so that no one can tell to which trunk the branch 
belonged, or to which branch the leaf. The tree or plant 
cannot be reconstructed as a skilful anatomist would recon- 
struct the skeleton of an animal from its scattered bones; for we 
find many distinct species of plants having the same outline 
both of foliage and fructification, and this is all that the fossil 
botanist has, in many instances, to depend upon. Many 
favourable situations will no doubt suggest themselves for the 
collection of vegetable fossils. We should note also, the 
manner in which these fossils were imbedded in the 
stratum, whether their position was vertical or inclined ; if 
inclined, the degree of inclination? whether, as in the 
case of some calamites and sigillariae, any appendages resem- 
bling roots can be observed ? whether they are found in 
masses, or spread regularly through the stratum in which they 
occur? whether the ferns are not found chiefly in rocks 
which contain little or no sand, or the reverse? and whether 
they are not often found in strata which are known gradually 
