108 PALEOBOTANY [Bot. Absts. 



be handicapped in adopting an aquatic habit by the high degree of complexity they have 

 acquired; while the more simple Ranales are perhaps more plastic to the aquatic habit. There 

 was also less competition in earlier times than now, before the water was so well populated. — 

 K. M. Wiegand. 



734. Bertrand, Paul. Sur la flore du bassin houiller de Lyon (bassin houiller du Bas- 

 Dauphine). [Flora of the Coal basin of Lyon.] Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. Paris 168: 174-177. 

 1919. — To determine the possible extension of the St. Etienne Coal Basin in the direction of 

 Lyon, deep borings have been made to the east and southeast of that city with the result that 

 a series of bituminous and coal-bearing rocks to the thickness of 700 meters or more were dis- 

 covered directly overlying the crystalline rocks. This series throughout has yielded deter- 

 minable plant remains which serve well the purposes of correlation. Walchia occurs through- 

 out the entire series, very sparingly at the base but abundantly toward the top, showing that 

 the lowermost units are not older than the transition beds between the Rive-de-Gier and the 

 St. Etienne series. The plant species, of which the author gives a list, are typical of the St. 

 Etienne series and the absence even from the upper beds of the species characteristic of the 

 zone of Odontopteris minor Br. shows that the uppermost units are no younger if indeed quite 

 as young as the bituminous beds of Montrambert of the Lower Stephanien. — H. Bassler. 



735 Garwood, Edmund J., and Edith Goodyear. On the geology of the Old Radnor 

 District with special reference to an algal development in the Woolhope Limestone. Quart. 

 Jour. Geol. Soc. London 74: 1-30. PI. I-VII. 1918.— The Woolhope Limestone of the Old 

 Radnor and Nash-Scar districts of the Welsh Border constitutes a special reef facies of the 

 Wenlock series of the Middle Silurian with by far the most remarkable development of algal 

 limestone yet recorded from the British rocks. This limestone, 80 to 100 feet thick, is unusu- 

 ally pure, CaC03 exceeding 99 per cent of the whole, calcareous algae, especially Solonopora, 

 in places constituting fully half the rock. The algae occur in the form of irregular nodular 

 growths varying in size from that of a pea to masses 17 centimeters in diameter, appearing on 

 weathered surfaces as conspicuous white spots scattered through the deposit. Two species 

 of algae are discussed in detail and figures on Plate VI. Spharocodium gothlandicum Roth- 

 pletz and Solonopora gracilis sp. nov. (described on page 27). These fossil reefs though strik- 

 ingly similar, appear to be slightly older than the algal-reef-bearing series of southern Got- 

 land. — II. Bassler. 



736. Nathorst, A. G. Ginkgo adiantoides (Unger) Heer in Tertiar Spitzbergens nebst 

 einer Kunzen Uebersicht der iibrigen fossilen Ginkgophyten desselben Landes. [G. adian- 

 toides in Spitzbergen Tertiary, etc.] Geol. Foren. Forhandl. Stockholm 41: 234-248. Fig. 

 1-4. 1919.— The discovery of this species near the base of the Tertiary, both at Green Harbor 

 and Braganza Bay, Spitzbergen, here announced for the first time, is interesting from the 

 fact that these localities are 8° of latitude farther north than any at which it has been discov- 

 ered heretofore, though its distribution in the North Temperate Zone is wide. In time it is 

 known to range from the Upper Cretaceous to the Upper Pliocene. In a statement to the brief 

 review of other ginkgoalian plants of Spitzbergen, the author emphasizes that the following 

 must be considered merely preliminary to a critical revision of this group which he hopes to 

 publish as a supplement to his Contributions to the Mesozoic Flora of Spitzbergen. The so- 

 called "Taxodium Shales" (Tertiary) of Kap Staratschin yielded two species of Torellia 

 Feildcnia] somewhat provisionally assigned to the Ginkgoales. In the "Sandstone Series," 

 [apparently transitional between the Cretaceous and the Jurassic of this region, there are two 

 plant-bearing horizons about 40 meters apart, of which the higher comprises the so-called 

 "Ginkgo beds" and the lower the "Elatides beds." The first-mentioned are the richer in gink- 

 goalian remains, having already yielded several species each of genera the Ginkgo and Baiera 

 and at least one each of the genera Czekanowskia, Phoenicopsis, and Eretmophyllum (?). 

 Two much reduced species of Baiera and one of Torellia are the only ginkgoalians thus far 

 reported from the Elatides beds. Neither the Rhaetic nor the Triassic of Spitzbergen have 

 yet yielded plants of this group but Psygmophyllum Williamsoni Nath. from the Devonian 

 has some superficial characters which suggest affinity. [See Bot. Absts. 3, Entry 1613.] — H. 

 Bassler. 



