404 UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



above Fort Union, as well as at several localities along the eastern base of 

 the Rocky Mountains, farther south. I have never seen it from New Jersey, 

 or any other locality east of the Mississippi, though my friend Mr. Gabb cites 

 New Jersey as one of its localities, in his Synopsis of Cretaceous Mollusca. 



Baculites a s p e r , Morton ? 



Plate 39, figs. 10, <r, d (not b, c). 



Baculites asper, Morton (1834), Synopsis Org. Rem. Cret. Group U. S., 43, pi. i, figs. 12 and 13 ; and pi. xiii, 

 fig. 2.— Gabb (1861), Proceed. Acad. Nat, Sci. Philad., XIII, 394, pi. iii, fig. 4.— Meek 

 (1864), Smithsonian Check-List N. Am. Cret. Fossils, 23. 



Baculites asperoules, Meek and Hayden (1860), Proceed. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 421 (without description). 



Of the form here referred doubtfully to Dr. Morton's B. asper, only frag- 

 ments are yet known. It is a small, very gradually tapering shell, with an 

 ovate section, and ornamented along each side, near the antisiphonal margin, 

 both on the septate and n'on-septate portions, by a row of rather distantly 

 separated, node-like prominences, that show the faintest perceivable tendency 

 to extend obliquely forward and toward the siphonal side, as undulations, 

 parallel to the lines of growth. 



At the time we proposed, in a list, to name this shell as a new species, 

 we only knew Dr. Morton's species B. asper, from his very brief description 

 and figures of the exterior of fragments, without illustrations or description 

 of its septa. Since that time, Mr. Gabb has published a figure of its septa, 

 as made out by him from Dr. Morton's original type-specimen; and on com- 

 parison with this figure, although it shows some rather marked differences in 

 the details of the lobes and sinuses, from the form here under consideration, 

 I am rather inclined to think that it may not be distinct from Dr. Morton's 

 species, especially as it agrees so nearly in size, form, and nodes with* his 

 type. The more observable differences consist in the relatively narrower 

 form and more deeply sinuous character of the lateral sinuses of our shell, 

 and its proportionally longer and more deeply-divided second lateral lobe. 

 Still, we sometimes see quite as marked differences in the septa of different 

 individuals of B. ovatus. Indeed, the septa of our type, as well as those of 

 B. asper, present no very essential difference from those of B. ovatus, though 

 both are readily distinguished from the last-mentioned species by their 

 smaller size, and the possession of distant node-like prominences on both the 

 septate and non-septate portions, instead of obliquely-curved transverse ridges 

 or undulations along the sides of the non-septate part only. 



