FLORA OF THE TRINITY FORMATION. 335 



fucoidal stems seem to ho different fi'om the larfjer and shorter branching 

 objects wliich I was at tlie time incHned to refer to some coniferous plant. 



While on the suliject of this pi'ol)lematical form, the vegetable nature 

 of which is, to say the least, still very doubtful, it may l)e well to review 

 its histoiy. Mr. Hill was under the impression that he was the first to 

 discover it in the Cretaceous of Texas, and his fiist published mention of 

 it was that al)ove (juoted in his Check List in 1889. This occurs in his 

 geological inti'oduction, and it is not included among tlic fossils of the 

 Aimotated Check List, which is confined to recognized animal forms that 

 admit of systematic classification. In his jiapei-, also above cited, on 

 the Ocem-rence of Goniolina in the Comanche Series (1890), he gives its 

 range as beginning "in the Colorado River section at the first (lowest) 

 fossiliferous horizon in the basal Fredericksburg bed above the Trinity 

 sands, and ranging upward through 450 feet of sediments into th(^ base 

 of tlie Comanche Peak chalk." He had sent specimens to "various 

 paleontological friends in the scientific centers of the East, all of whom 

 pronounced them an vmdetermined species of the genus Goniolina, of 

 D'Orbigny." 



He again mentions it in his Comanche series of the Texas-Arkansas 

 region (1891), as "the large, strawberry-shaped Goniolina or Parkeria" 

 (p. 508). 



Li a paper read before the Biological Society of Washington on 

 January 28, 1893," Mr. Hill discusses this form in the light of his latest 

 oljservations, and especially of those made in the Glen Rose beds on the 

 occasion of oui' \isit above described, and on p. 39 he describes it, 

 classing it under "Planta^" and calling it an "undetermined species 

 ('Goniolina"? of author's previous writings)." In the discussion, how- 

 ever, he says: 



A careful study in situ of the surface of a stratum in wliich tiicse seams were 

 well exposed .showed that they branched very mucli Hkc coniferou.s plants. At the 

 termination of each ramification was I'ound one of the small spherical casts, as if 

 the liml) of a plant hiden witli cones had l)cen huried in tlie mud and its cast preserved. 

 Recently, however, the fruit structure has hecn deteriuin(>d in the s]H'ciniens them- 

 selves as figured on i)late i [fiij;s. 1 Id]. 



The .species should he named for Prof. Lester F. Ward, who has done so nnich 

 for American paleobotany and has ever encouraged the writer in his studies. 



" Paleontology of tlic Cictiiccous fonmitions of Tcxiis. The invprtobiato paleontolofiy of tlic Trinity 

 division, by Robert T. Uill: Prof. Hiol. Soc. Wasb., Vol. VUI, 1893, pp. 9-40, pi. i-viii. 



