In looking through the writings of the earlier authors we cannot help noticing their anxiety to match all fossil plants with living species; but by degrees it was discovered that fossils are frequently the fragmentary samples of extinct types, which can be studied only under very unfavourable conditions. In the absence of those characters on which the student of living plants relies as guides to classification, it is usually impossible to arrive at any trustworthy conclusions as to precise botanical affinity. Brongniart and other authors recognised this fact, and instituted several convenient generic terms of a purely artificial and provisional nature, which are still in general use. The dangers and risks of error which necessarily attend our attempts to determine small and imperfect fragments of extinct species of plants, will be briefly touched on in another place. CHAPTER II. RELATION OF PALAEOBOTANY TO BOTANY AND GEOLOGY. “La recherche du plan de la création, voilà le but vers lequel nos efforts peuvent tendre aujourd’hui.” GAUDRY, 1883. Since the greater refinements and thoroughness of scientific methods and the enormous and ever-increasing mass of literature have inevitably led to extreme specialisation, it is more than ever important to look beyond the immediate limits of one’s own subject, and to note its points of contact with other lines of research. A palaeobotanist is primarily concerned with the determination and description of fossil plants, but he must at the same time constantly keep in view the bearing of his work on wider questions of botanical or geological importance. From the nature of the case, we have in due measure to adapt the methods of work to the particular conditions before us. It is impossible to follow in the case of all fossil species precisely the same treatment as with the more complete and perfect recent plants; but it is of the utmost importance for a student of palaeobotany, by adhering to the methods of recent botany, to preserve as far as he is able the continuity of the past and present floras. Palaeontological work has often been undertaken by men who are pure geologists, and whose knowledge of zoology or botany is of the most superficial character, with the result that biologists have not been able to avail themselves, to any considerable extent, of the records of extinct forms of life. They find the literature is often characterised by a special palaeontological phraseology, and by particular methods of treatment, which are unknown to the student of living plants and animals. From this and other causes a purely artificial division has been made between the science of the organic world of to-day and that of the past. [Sidenote: NEGLECT OF FOSSILS BY BOTANISTS.]