1906J Collection of Fossil Fruits from Vermont. 15 



NOTES ON AN INTERESTING COLLECTION OF FOSSIL 



FRUITS FROM VERMONT, IN THE MUSEUM OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA.* 



By H. M. Ami, Geological Survey of Canada. 



Amongst the specimens exhibited at the first January meeting 

 ot the Botanical Club was a collection of fossil fruits from Bran- 

 don, Vermont. These specimens appeared to have been in the 

 collections of the Geological Survey Museum since the days of the 

 late Sir William Logan, having been brought to his attention, it 

 is thought, by the elder Hitchcock in the early fifties. It was in 

 1853 that these fossil fruits were recorded for the first time by- 

 President Edward Hitchcock, in the Amer. Jour. Sc, vol. xv, 

 p. 95 (1853), as occurring in "a bed of brown coal connected with 

 the white clays and brown hematite of the place," referring to 

 Brandon, Vermont, which he had visited in the spring of 1852. 



During the visit of the Geological Society of America held in 

 Ottawa in December, 1905, Prof. G. H. Perkins, Director of the 

 State Geological Survey, Vermont, was good enough to look 

 over the collection of these fruits, which were shown to him by 

 the writer, and he there and then undertook to identify every 

 recognizable species, most of which he had himself recently 

 studied, and more particularly described, not only before the 

 Geological Society of America, at the Philadelphia meeting, but 

 also in the Report ot the State Geologist for Vermont for the 

 years 1903- 1904. 



The geological horizon or formation to which these fruits 

 have been referred by many geologists practically agree in ascrib- 

 ing them to the "Lignite Tertiary," the Brandon Lignite or Brandon 

 formation, specially designating the horizon or formation to which 

 they are referable. Professor Perkins is inclined to think them as 

 " Miocene Tertiary" in age. Their age was compared by Edward 

 Hitchcock with those of the fossil fruits from the London clay 

 figured by Bowerbank, and he (Hitchcock) further states that 

 " the Brandon deposit is the type of a Tertiary formation hitherto 

 unrecognized as such extending from Canada to Alabama," add- 

 ing ; " This deposit belongs to the Pliocene or newer Tertiary.' 



* Published by permission of the Director of the Geol. Survey of Canada. 



