﻿DISCOVERIES' AND COLLECTIONS. 7 



Cycadeoidea abequidensis Dawson (36), an impression from the Trias of Gallas 

 Point, Prince Edward Island, now in the museum of McGill University, Montreal. 



Cycadeoidea munita Cragin (34), from southern Kansas (probably from the 

 Dakota formation), in the collection of Colorado College. 



Cycadeoidea {Zamiostrobus) mirdbilis Lesquereux (77), from near Golden, Colo- 

 rado, in the United States National Museum at Washington. The horizon of C. 

 mirabUis is uncertain. 



Cycadeoidea nigra Ward (178), an exceedingly handsome and well-preserved 

 trunk from a railway cut in the vicinity of Boulder, Colorado, assigned with some 

 degree of uncertainty to strata of Jurassic age. Although found some fifteen years 

 ago, this trunk was not described until 1900. It bears a striking resemblance to 

 the Italian C. Raumeriana of Capellini &: Sohns, and to C. Uhlerioi the Potomac 

 Formation of Maryland. 



DISCOVERY OF CYCADS IN THE BLACK HILLS. 



Scientific attention was not directed to the most important of all the American 

 cycad horizons, namely, the Mesozoic Rim of the Black Hills of South Dakota and 

 Wyoming, until 1893. Although various trunks had been noted at Black Hawk by 

 miners on their way to Deadwood in 1878, when the Hills were first opened for 

 settlement, and later at Minuekahta, no careful collection at or study of either of 

 these localities was made previous to 1893 — a year important alike for the discovery 

 of man}- trunks in Maryland, as mentioned above, and for the first description of 

 cycads from the Black Hills region. In February, 1893, six silicified trunks were 

 received at the United States National Museum from Minuekahta, on the southern 

 side of the Black Hills, by Prof. Lester F. Ward, these having been forwarded by a 

 local collector. They include the handsome types described by Ward five years later 

 as Cycadeoidea co/ossa/is, C. Paynei, C. pulcherrima, and C. Colei (175). 



With the exception of a fragmentary trunk picked up at the famous Black 

 Hawk locality on the eastern side of the Hills in 1878, a portion of which was 

 secured by the writer twenty years later and is now in the Yale Museum, these six 

 National Museum specimens were, then, the first of the marvelous trunks from the 

 Black Hills Rim to reach a place of safety. 



Later in the summer of 1893, after the collection of the above-mentioned trunks, 

 the Minuekahta locality was visited by Prof. Thomas H. Macbride, of the State 

 University of Iowa, who made a collection of twenty trunks. These are now in 

 the museum of the State University of Iowa at Iowa City, and constitute one of 

 the very handsomest cycad collections in the world. One of these trunks, of superb 

 beauty and in full fruit, Professor Macbride described and figured in the American 

 Geologist for October, 1893, as the type of Cycadeoidea (Bennettites) dacotensis. 

 This constitutes the first scientific description or printed reference to the occurrence 

 of silicified cycads in the Black Hills. Prof. Lester F. Ward had, however, also 

 visited the Minnekahta locality in the autumn of 1893, securing among various 

 other specimens the especially handsome trunk which he later described as Cyca- 

 deoidea minnekahtensis (175). 



