China was at war in 1948. There were only 2 or 3 professional palaeobotanists in China at that time. It was very difficult for them to persist in their palaeoboanical studies during war time. Here are two interesting articles documenting some historical arguments between Jen Hsü (Xu Ren, 1910–1992) and Hsing–Chien Sze (Si Xing–Jian, 1901–1964), who are usually considered to be the pioneers of Chinese palaeobotany.

Hsü published his article entitled “On fossil plants”(《谈植物化石》) on the August 1948 issue of Science [《科学》, Vol.30(8)](中国科学社编辑出版— Edited by the Chinese Association for the Advancement of Science).

 Sze thought that “科学只讲是非，不讲人情”(Science is just concerned about the fact, but not about personal feeling. ) He made some straightforward comments about Hsü’s article on the November 1948 issue of Science [斯行健《也谈植物化石》《科学》, Vol.30(11)].

Now, China is of great peace and prosperity, but Chinese palaeobotanical community seems deadly quiet because of the absence of academic criticisms for several decades.

I thank Dr. Qi Wang of the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) for his kindly presenting the pdf-formatted version of the references.

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