24 CONNECTICUT GEOL. AND NAT. HIST. SURVEY. [Bull. 



certainty at the summit of the Triassic system, and narrows the 

 discussion down chiefly to the verbal question whether it shall 



be called Rhaetic or Keuper The beds that seem to 



be most nearly identical, so far as the plants are concerned, are 

 those of Lunz, in Austria, and of Neue Welt, in Switzerland. 

 These have been placed by the best European geologists in the 

 Upper Keuper. Our American Trias can scarcely be lower than 

 this, and it probably cannot be higher than the Rhaetic beds of 

 Bavaria." 1 



Professor J. S. Newberry reached a similar conclusion in re- 

 gard to the homotaxial relations of the " Newark " series of the 

 Atlantic border region, 2 but it is rather singular that his reference 

 of these beds to the uppermost Trias was based almost entirely 

 upon the evidence furnished by fossil plants, whereas that af- 

 forded by the fishes was in part neglected, in part misinterpreted. 

 This accomplished student of paleichthyology was clearly in 

 error, as will presently appear, in supposing that the fishes of 

 the Newark system are " not nearly related to those of any 

 European formation," and he failed even to recognize the 

 identity between the so-called " Ischypteras" of Egerton and 

 Agassiz's genus Semionotus. 



As early as 1850 Professor Louis Agassiz declared that in 

 his opinion the fossil fishes from the Virginia coal field, and 

 " from the so-called New Red Sandstone [of New Jersey and 

 New England], indicate an age intermediate between the 

 European New Red and the Oolite." 3 Subsequently he modified 

 this view so far as to state that the fossils in question are the 

 equivalent neither of the Triassic fishes of southern Germany, 

 nor of those from the English Lias, wherefore he referred the 



1 Ward, L. F., The Plant-bearing Deposits of the American Trias. Bull. Geol. Soc. 

 Am., 1891, iii, pp. 23-31. — Idem, Principles and Methods of Geologic Correlation 

 by means of Fossil Plants. Am. Geol., 1891, ix, pp. 34-47- 



Writing three years earlier than Professor Ward, the Austrian geologist, D. Stur, 

 concluded from the evidence of fossil plants that the Virginia coal-field area is the 

 precise equivalent of the German Lettenkohle, which, according to some geologists, 

 immediately underlies the Keuper, while by others it is regarded as the lowest division 

 of the Keuper, just as the Rhaetic is sometimes incorporated with the Keuper as 

 its uppermost member. The title of his paper is as follows: "Die Lunzer- (Letten- 

 kohlen-) Flora in den ' older Mesozoic beds of the Coalfield of eastern Virginia.' " 

 Verh. Geol. Reichsanst., 1888, no. 10, pp. 203-217. 



2 Newberry, J. S., The Fauna and Flora of the Trias of New Jersey and the Con- 

 necticut Valley. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 1887, vi, pp. 124-128. 



3 Agassiz, L., Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1850, iv, p. 276. 



