J. S. NEWBERRY THE LARAMIE GROUP. 525 



Union group at Fort Union, on Tongue river, on Amil's creek, and in other places, all of 

 which he placed in my hands for study. Most of these 1 described in the annals of 

 the New York Lyceum of Natural History in 1869. I called this flora Tertiary, and 

 made it Miocene because I identified in it many species of plants collected on Macken- 

 zie river, in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and various European localities described by 

 Professor Oswald Herr in his Flora Fossilis Arctica, and called there Miocene, but 

 since shown by Mr. J. Starkie Gardner to be Eocene. 



Mr. Leo Lesquereux, who was for many years employed by Dr. Hayden to work 

 up the plants collected by the different parties of the Geological Survey of the Terri- 

 tories, following Dr. Hayden, united the Laramie and Fort Union and called the 

 Laramie Eocene and the Fort Union Miocene. Mr. Lesquereux described in Dr. 

 Hayden's annual reports and in volumes VII and VIII of his final report a large 

 number of fossil plants from the Laramie, collected at Placer mountain, New Mexico, 

 the Raton mountains, Fisher's peak (Trinidad), Golden, Marshall, Point of Rocks, 

 Black Butte, and other points. As has been stated, he regarded this flora as Eocene, 



In the Sixth Annual Report of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey (1885) 

 Professor Lester F. Ward published a " Synopsis of the Flora of the Laramie Group." 

 Like Dr. Hayden and Mr. Lesquereux, he unites the Laramie and Fort Union groups 

 and calls them Tertiary but, unlike Mr. Lesquereux, considers the whole Eocene. 

 Professor Ward's material, chiefly collected by himself in the valley of the Yellow- 

 stone, is mostly from the Fort Union group, and so his memoir is really and only 

 an important contribution to our knowledge of the Fort Union flora. 



In 1875 Professor E. D. Cope discovered in the Laramie group, at Black Butte, 

 the bones of a saurian which he called Agathaumas sylvesire. Between and around 

 the bones of this saurian were numerous fossil leaves. Professor Cope pronounced 

 his saurian to be of Cretaceous age, and accepting Mr. Lesquereux's view that the as- 

 sociated flora was Tertiary he says, in the second volume of the final report of Dr. 

 Hayden (page 40) : 



" There is then no alternative but to accept the result that a Tertiary flora was contemporaneous 

 with a Cretaceous fauna, establishing an uninterrupted succession of life across what is generally 

 regarded as one of the greatest breaks in geologic time." 



This paragraph has been frequently quoted, and has been considered by some as 

 proof that the testimony of plants was inconsistent with that of animal remains, and 

 that plants were of little value in deciding the age of strata. Since the publication of 

 Professor Cope's report here referred to I have spent much time in the study of the 

 structure and fossils of the Laramie group in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and 

 Utah. I have made and had made larger collections of the plants of the Laramie 

 than had before been gathered by any one ; have compared them carefully with the 

 flora of the Fort Union group; and in two visits to Europe have examined all the 

 principal collections of Tertiary and Cretaceous plants made in England or on the Con- 

 tinent, largely for the purpose of solving the problem of the age of the Laramie as 

 compared with other more or less closely associated formations in this country and in 

 Europe. My purpose in coming before you to-day is to briefly report the results at 

 which I have arrived ; and these are: — 



First. That the floras of the Laramie and Fort Union groups are totally distinct, 

 and these formations should be referred to different geological systems— the Fort Union 

 to the Tertiary, the Laramie to the Cretaceous. 



I have not myself seen a single species common to these floras, and but one has 

 been reported by others, viz., Trapa mierophylla, found by Lesquereux at Point of 

 LXX— Bull Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. I, 1889. 



