Fossil Plants: A Text-book for Students of Botany and Geology (Complete‪)‬

The scientific study of fossil plants dates from a comparatively recent period, and palaeobotany has only attained a real importance in the eyes of botanists and geologists during the last few decades of the present century. It would be out of place, in a short treatise like the present, to attempt a detailed historical sketch, or to give an adequate account of the gradual rise and development of this modern science. An excellent Sketch of Palaeobotany has recently been drawn up by Prof. Lester Ward, of the United States Geological Survey, and an earlier historical retrospect may be found in the introduction to an important work by an eminent German palaeobotanist, the late Prof. Göppert. In the well-known work by Parkinson on The Organic Remains of a Former World there is much interesting information as to the early history of our knowledge of fossil plants, as well as a good exposition of the views held at the beginning of this century. As a means of bringing into relief the modern development of the science of fossil plants, we may briefly pass in review some of the earlier writers, who have concerned themselves in a greater or less degree with a descriptive or speculative treatment of the records of a past vegetation. In the early part of the present century, and still more in the eighteenth century, the occurrence of fossil plants and animals in the earth’s crust formed the subject of animated, not to say acrimonious, discussion. The result was that many striking and ingenious theories were formulated as to the exact manner of formation of fossil remains, and the part played by the waters of the deluge in depositing fossiliferous strata. The earlier views on fossil vegetables are naturally bound up with the gradual evolution of geological science. It is from Italy that we seem to have the first glimmering of scientific views; but we are led to forget this early development of more than three hundred years ago, when we turn to the writings of English and other authors of the eighteenth century. “Under these white banks by the roadside,” as a writer on Verona has expressed it, “was born, like a poor Italian gipsy, the modern science of geology.” Early in the sixteenth century the genius of Leonardo da Vinci compelled him to adopt a reasonable explanation of the occurrence of fossil shells in rocks far above the present sea-level. Another Italian writer, Fracastaro, whose attention was directed to this matter by the discovery of numerous shells brought to light by excavations at Verona, expressed his belief in the organic nature of the remains, and went so far as to call in question the Mosaic deluge as a satisfactory explanation of the deposition of fossil-bearing strata.