378 Notices of Books and Papers. 
untenable. Subsequent chapters deal with Sphenophylleae and a 
number of other forms which our author regards as of doubtful 
relationship. A bibliographical list concludes the volume. 
Readers will miss an account of the Angiosperms, but these, as 
the author explains in the introductory chapter, would have been 
of little interest from the point of view which he has adopted with 
reference to the whole subject ; and it is on account of this omission 
that the work is simply called an introduction to Palaeophytology. 
The book as a whole is an able critical digest of the field over 
which it travels, and the specimens, descriptions, and hypotheses 
of writers are examined with thorough impartiality. Approval of the 
views of a writer on one point in one paragraph often prefaces 
dissent from the same writer on another point in the succeeding 
paragraph ; and acknowledgment by our author of the kindness 
of a worker in submitting an original specimen for examination is 
not infrequently followed by an expression of regret that he is 
unable to agree with him in his interpretation of its facts. All is 
written however with a charming frankness, good temper, and 
courtesy. 
Of course, Graf zu Solms-Laubach’s views will not be altogether 
accepted by Palaeophytologists. On some points he has undoubtedly 
been led into wrong assumptions ; — to note only one point, which 
we hope will be placed beyond all doubt by a paper in an early 
number of the Annals of Botany, P achy thee a is an Alga, although 
Graf zu Solms-Laubach is inclined to assign it to the inorganic 
kingdom; — but the genuineness of his attempts to get at the truth 
and unweave the tangled veil that invests so much of the subject 
is everywhere manifest, and even his wrong-going will do good by 
bringing out further evidence to prove that such is the case. 
One feature that will strike all English readers of the book is 
the attention that has been paid to works in English. This was 
inevitable in any honest book on Fossil Botany, but it is none 
the less satisfactory to find the work of Witham, Lindley and Hutton, 
Hooker, Binney, Williamson, Carruthers, Dawson, and others, so 
fully acknowledged, because a tendency of an opposite kind prevails 
in too many modern German works. 
The book is one of great value and importance. We are greatly 
mistaken if it does not give a new impetus to the study of fossil 
plants, for it will enable any botanist to obtain an insight into the 
