437 
This consideration necessarily leads ns to doubt, if any reliance 
can be placed on the accounts which have been given, by different 
authors, respecting the existence of fossil flowers. Indeed, the 
earlier writers on this science too frequently admitted resemblances, 
when the connection betw^een the supposed model and archetype 
were too equivocal to authorize them. Thus Mylius imagined that 
he traced the flower of the mouse-ear on a flint, and the rose of 
Jericho on a schist from Manebach ; both of which M. Walch 
believes were, in reality, merely impressions of trochites. Not 
having myself seen any fossil which can with certainty be said to 
have had such an origin; nor having seen any representation, or 
description, which would fully authorize the admission of their 
existence ; and not conceiving that the supposed fossil flowers of 
plants, of the verticillated order, would be capable of being distin- 
guished in that state, I have not ventured to introduce the delinea- 
tion of a fossil flower (Antholithus) ; nor does it seem necessary to 
dwell longer on the consideration of substances, whose existence is 
merely conjectural. 
Our incjuiries respecting the remains of the seeds and seed-vessels 
of different vegetables, Spermolithi, Linn, of former ages, may be 
hoped to be rather more successful ; since these do sometimes 
possess such a degree of solidity, as when they are placed in situ- 
ations which prohibit their vegetation, will allow of their duration, 
until their bituminous change is effected. 
This necessary degree of hardness will chiefly be found in those 
fruits or seeds, the external parts of which have a tough ligamentous 
covering, like that of the chesnut ; a hard scaly covering as in the 
cone of the pine-tree, where the pericarp, formed from an amentum, 
consists of hard scales laying over each other ; a tough farinaceous 
substance which becomes dry and hard, as in the coftee-berry ; an 
osseous or bony covering, as in the hazel-nut ; or a still harder 
investiture, as the stone of pulpy, or fleshy fruits CdrupcsJ. 
