Abstract
IN a memoir recently read before the Royal Society, I propounded a new classification of the vascular cryptogams, and at the late meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh I brought the same subject forward, when my views were opposed by Mr. Carruthers, Dr. M'Nab, and Prof. Dyer, as reported in the columns of NATURE for Aug. 31. I was well aware that when I disturbed existing and time-honoured systems of classification I should meet with such opposition; but, being thoroughly Convinced that my views are sound, and that they will ultimately be adopted, it only remains for me to face the conflict, and persevere with my demonstrations of what I believe to be true. My present object is to do what was impossible in the hurried and unsatisfactory discussions that frequently arose at the meetings of the British Association to accomplish, viz.: to take care that there shall be no misunderstanding as to the real points at issue. My opponents seek to interpret the gigantic arborescent stems of the coal-measures by the light of the dwarfed and degraded examples of vascular cryptogams which constitute their living representatives. I, on the other hand, claim to interpret the latter by the former, some of which, the Lycopods, for example, instead of being feeble things trailing in the grass, had stems three feet in diameter, and rising a hundred feet into the air. Instead of merely constituting a verdant carpet for forests of noble exogens and endogens, they were the forest; here, consequently, we might expect that whatever characteristic features they possessed would be developed and displayed in their utmost perfection.
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WILLIAMSON, W. On Exogenous Structures Amongst the Stems of the Coal Measures . Nature 4, 408–409 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004408a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004408a0