Here we have the suggestion that in former ages there were plants which differed from those of the present age. Discussing the nature of some cones (_Lepidostrobi_) from the ironstone of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, he concludes: “I firmly believe these bodies to be of vegetable origin, buried in the strata of the Earth at the time of the universal deluge recorded by Moses.” Scheuchzer of Zurich, the author of one of the earliest works on fossil plants and a “great apostle of the Flood Theory,” figures and describes a specimen as an ear of corn, and refers to its size and general appearance as pointing to the month of May as the time of the deluge[8]. Another English writer, Dr Parsons, in giving an account of the well-known ‘fossil fruits and other bodies found in the island of Sheppey,’ is disposed to dissent from Woodward’s views as to the time of the flood. He suggests that the fact of the Sheppey fruits being found in a perfectly ripe condition, points to the autumn as the more probable time for the occurrence of the deluge[9]. In looking through the works of the older writers, and occasionally in the pages of latter-day contributors, we frequently find curiously shaped stones, mineral markings on rock surfaces, or certain fossil animals, described as fossil plants. In Plot’s _Natural History of Oxfordshire_, published in 1705, a peculiarly shaped stone, probably a flint, is spoken of as one of the ‘Fungi lethales non esculenti[10]’; and again a piece of coral[11] is compared with a ‘Bryony root broken off transversely.’ On the other hand, that we may not undervalue the painstaking and laborious efforts of those who helped to lay the foundations of modern science, we may note that such authors as Scheuchzer and Woodward were not misled by the moss-like or dendritic markings of oxide of manganese on the surface of rocks, which are not infrequently seen to-day in the cabinets of amateurs as specimens of fossil plants. The oldest figures of fossil plants from English rocks which are drawn with any degree of accuracy are those of Coal-Measure ferns and other plants in an important work by Edward Lhwyd published at Oxford in 1760[12].