Abstract
THE perusal of Dr. M‘Nab's reply to my short article on the existence of an exogenous process of growth amongst the cryptogamic stems of the coal measures, confirms my previous conviction that the discussion of the details of my proposition can lead to no beneficial results until the publication of my large store of new facts has been completed. Dr. M‘Nab's article convinces me, as indeed is necessarily the case, that he has no conception either of the nature or of the extent of those facts. Were it otherwise, he would see at a glance how far his explanations are irom accounting for them. He has given an exposition of a common process of exogenous growth, which is true as far as it goes; but I can assure him that the modifications of that process, so far as we can infer from peculiarities of structure, have been much more varied in past geological ages than he is aware of. He is pleased to affirm two things which require proof: (1) that I have “been led away by the mere superficial resemblance of the parts;” and (2) that I have “never tried to understand the homologies of these stems.” To the first of these charges I plead not guilty; to the second I reply that I was trying to understand these things when he was a child at school. Whether or not I have succeeded remains to be seen, but as yet he has told me nothing new to me.
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WILLIAMSON, W. Exogenous Structures Amongst the Stems of the Coal Measures . Nature 4, 490–492 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004490a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004490a0