214 MESOZOIC FLORAS OF UNITED STATES. 



wood Creek, and a man who had seen it guided us to the locality, which 

 is on Cottonwood (^reek, a quarter of a mile below the mouth of Eagle 

 Creek. As I expected, the (!oal proved to be lignite, and there are many 

 lignitized as well as silicified logs and quantities of blocks of fossil wood. 

 The trunks are frequently silicified in the center and lignitized near the 

 surface. The \\ood usually shows the grain well. Many of the rocks in 

 which the trunks are embedded contain vegetable matter, mostly in the 

 form of coaly stems. A few recognizable plant impressions were, how- 

 ever, found, chiefly fragments of ferns and leaf-l^earing coniferous twigs. 



As the strike of these beds is here northeast-southwest and the dip 

 to the southeast is very steep even here, though much less so than farther 

 south, the strata rise rapidly in descending Cottonwood Creek, and 

 there is a correspondingly rapid change in the character of the flora. 

 The strata could not be traced continuously, but at the mouth of Hulen 

 Creek, 100 yards above the junction of the two streams, in coarse, dark- 

 colored sandstone shales, dicotyledonous leaves were found. Owing to 

 the coarse matrix, the nervation is obscure and the material obtained is 

 •rather poor. This bed belongs to the Chico, according to Doctor Stan- 

 ton's deterininations, and these dicotyledonous leaves are not included 

 in the descriptions given in this paper, l)ut the material is reserved for a 

 later paper which will treat exclusively of the upper leaf-bearing beds 

 of the Lower Cretaceous. 



In Aldersons Gulch plants wei'e exceedingly scarce, but in two 

 places we found them in the hard, fine-grained concretionaiy rocks that 

 ever>Tvhere foiTn seams among the shales. Several coniferous twigs 

 were found, a few showing the leaves. Cycadaceous vegetation was 

 also detected. Fossil wood is abundant. 



On the 16th we left Ono and proceeded southward to Stephenson's 

 ranch, on the Cold Fork of Cottonwood Creek, a mile above Pettyjohn's, 

 in Tehama County. A few fossil plants were found on this stream at 

 two localities above the ranch, chiefly ferns and conifers. Vegetable 

 remains are here very rare. 



From here we continued om- journey southward and arrived on the 

 18th at Lowry, on Elder Creek, which was made the base of operations 

 during the remainder of the expedition. Four miles west of Lowry, on 

 the North Fork of Elder Creek, plant remains were found at several 



