Abstract
IN the study of palæobotany we may concern ourselves with the various problems of distribution, the geologic sequence of plant types, the value of fossil plants in comparative stratigraphy, and as tests of climatic conditions; or our attention may be concentrated on the important facts revealed by a microscopic study of petrified plant tissues. The latter field of research, in which Prof. Williamson has laboured with remarkable success during the last twenty-five years, is gradually being recognised by botanists as a branch of their science which they cannot afford to neglect in dealing with the wider problems of plant life. Fascinated by the almost incredible perfection in which Palæozoic, and more rarely Mesozoic, species have been preserved, the student of vegetable morphology is apt to take too little heed of the wealth of material which can only be studied in the form of structureless casts or impressions. In the majority of fossil floras the geologist or botanist must perforce confine himself to an examination of the few isolated and imperfect fragments that have escaped destruction in the process of denudation and rock-building, and have been preserved by fossilisation as meagre representatives of a past vegetation. As a specialist in this latter branch of palæobotany, there has been no more ardent worker since the days of Adolphe Brongniart, whom we may regard as the founder of palæobotanical science, than the Marquis of Saporta. Saporta's recent death, at his home in Aix-en-Provence, at the age of seventy-two, has deprived botanical and geological science of anunusually able and vigorous worker.
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References
Saporta and Marion : "L'évolution du règne végétal." 3 vols. 1881–1885.
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SEWARD, A. The Marquis of Saporta. Nature 52, 57–58 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/052057a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/052057a0