Traite de Paleontologie Végétale

Abstract

IF asked to indicate the most suggestive discoveries in Geological Science that have been made within the last ten years, we should unhesitatingly point to that of the Eozoon,—to the unfathoming of the mysteries of the floor of the ocean,—and to the unearthing, in high Arctic regions, of forests of Dicotyledonous trees, not merely analogous in size, habit, and conditions of life, but specifically closely allied in structure to the forest trees of middle and southern Europe, Asia, and North America. The first of these discoveries carries back the history of life on the globe over a period indefinitely anterior to that which so long marked its starting-point; the second reveals a condition of life far lower than any hitherto discovered, if not the primordial condition of organized matter itself, and is the clue to the history of the chalk, the most complicated in its relations and the richest in animal remains of all known formations; whilst the third, the most simple in its outlines and the most intelligible in its facts, has hitherto check-mated every attempt to reconcile the stubborn conclusions of astronomers, in so far as these relate to the recent history of the globe, with the palaeontology of a period comparatively but little antecedent to our own in a geological point of view. Traite de Paleontologie Vegetale. By Prof. Schimper. (Paris, 1869. London: Williams and Norgate.)