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A New Book on Palceobotany. 
A NEW BOOK ON PALEOBOTANY. 
Pelourde, F. “ Pal^ontologie vegetale. Vol. I. Cryptogames 
cellulaires et cryptogames vasculaires.” Encyclopedic scienti- 
fique Doin, Paris, 1913. Price 5 francs. 
T HE task of writing an encyclopaedic treatise on Palaeobotany is by 
no means an easy one. The ground to be covered is so large, 
from Bacteria to flowering plants and from the far distant Palaeozoic 
epoch almost to the present day, that the selection of material must 
be very difficult. At the same time the interest of fossil types lies 
so frequently in the details of their structure that the limitations of 
space to describe it must be all the more heavily felt. In the 
present volume, however, Dr. Pelourde has succeeded in giving an 
excellent account of the fossil cryptogams in the short space of 
about 320 small pages, of which about 300 are devoted to the 
Pteridophyta. As a short summary of our knowledge of the past 
history of these plants, it is a work of conspicuous merit, for though 
it may not contain sufficiently detailed descriptions to serve as a 
text-book for the more advanced botanical student, it contains much 
interesting matter and has the great merit of being easy to 
read. The text is accompanied by a fairly full list of references to 
the more important literature. The plants which are known only 
from impressions receive proper attention, in addition to those 
whose structure has been investigated, and thus a fairly clear 
picture of the fossil types is obtained. Most of the present volume 
is concerned with Palaeozoic plants, but the Mesozoic forms are 
also frequently mentioned and occasionally figured; nevertheless 
some of the Mesozoic and Tertiary genera, which throw light on 
the ancestry of some of the modern ferns and of Equisetum , are 
rather neglected. 
Towards the somewhat complex nomenclature of fossil plants, 
the author adopts a very conservative attitude, the well-known 
Sphenophyllacean cones are spoken of as Bowmanites Dawsoni, 
though the figure is labelled Sphenopliyllum Dawsoni, and Scott’s 
species is spoken of as Sphenopliyllum fertile. Among the ferns we 
notice that the generic name of Zy^opteris is used in the older sense 
to include all forms with an H-shaped petiolar xylem, and the newer 
terms Ankyropteris and Etapteris are not employed. 
The first section gives a short summary of the fossil Thallo- 
phyta and Bryophyta. This is followed by an account of the 
Equisetales which is very clearly written; the different types of 
stems and of cones are briefly described, and the account completed 
by reference to the form and structure of the roots and the leaves. 
While good figures are given of the other types of cone, the figure 
of Calamostachys is very diagrammatic, and though C. Binneyana is 
described as the typical form, the figure does not give any 
indication of the structure or vascular supply of the sporangiophores 
and shows bundles which alternate at the level of the bracts. The 
structure of the vascular system of this cone is of great importance 
