Observations on fossil vegetables : accompanied by representations of their internal structure, as seen through the microscope / by Henry Witham.

  • Witham, Henry Thornton Maire, 1779-1844.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on fossil vegetables : accompanied by representations of their internal structure, as seen through the microscope / by Henry Witham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    by their external forms; and in many instances, these forms are obviously too much altered, to permit us to refer the objects in question, with perfect satisfaction, to any natural family. But a method has lately been disco- vered, by which the stems or branches may be sliced, and afterwards reduced to such a degree of thinness as to permit us to inspect the most minute re- mains of organic texture. The unexpected result thus obtained, has en- abled me to examine numerous varieties of structure in fossil plants; and I feel confident, that I should be rendering a service to science, by presenting to the public representations of some of these varieties, accompanied by others of those recent plants to which they seem decidedly to approximate. According to the opinion of those who have most successfully cultivated geological botany, the essential character of the first vegetation of the globe consisted in the great development and numerical preponderance of the vas- cular cryptogamic plants ; and the great size of the Ferns, Lycopodiacea?, and Equisetacea?, imbedded in our deposits, authorize us to presume, that, during that period, circumstances calculated to favour the development of these plants had prevailed in a very high degree. May we not now go a little farther, and, from the recent discoveries, suppose that heat and moisture had an equal effect upon plants of different genera from those of the vas- cular cryptogamic ? When we discover stems of fossil plants thirty, sixty, and even seventy feet long—when each torrent by its violence un- covers so many relics of ancient times—nay, whenever, by the busy inge- nuity of man, the lower as well as the higher sedimentary deposits are in- terfered with or disturbed, some previously unobserved fossil is discovered, it is but fair to conclude that the same causes have equally affected them. By the investigations of many of my friends, and by my own observa- tions, I ant induced (as already noticed) to think that plants of the phane- rogamic class will be found to occur in greater abundance in the earlier se- dimentary deposits than was before believed. The day is now arrived, when doubts and difficulties as to the class and family to which they are to be re- ferred, must give way under the microscopic examination of the internal structure of these fossil plants; and I am happy in having it in my power to contribute in some degree to the elucidation of this interesting subject.