ABSTRACT
Systematists dealing with fossils tend to give insufficient consideration to the peculiar nature and difficulties of their task. There are two radically different types of approach to it open to them—either to restrict themselves to classifying fossils as such, or to attempt to place the organisms, from which the fossils were derived, in relation to the system of modern animals and plants. The systematist who turns from classifying modern plants or animals to the attempt to do the same for the fossils of his group is apt to be deterred at the outset. The overall organisation of plants would appear to be in some way looser' than that of most animals, the parts being less intimately bound up with each other and there being consequently less possibility of deducing the whole organism from knowledge of one part of it; a fossil molar tooth of a mammal is probably more reliably classifiable than is a leaf of an angiosperm.
