408 FLORA OF THE LARAMIE GROUP. 



resemblance to the fossils of the Woolwich and Reading series of En- 

 glish geologists, as well as to those of the great Lignite formations of 

 the southeast of France, would seem to point to the lower Eocene as 

 their position." In view of the fact that eminent geologists with abun- 

 dant material before them have until very recently regarded the Fort 

 Union group as of Miocene age, this early hint at their lower position 

 seems to deserve mention in passing. On the other hand, the extremes 

 to which certain vertebrate remains from the Judith River beds farther 

 up the Missouri had led paleontologists in the opposite direction were 

 fairly anticii)ated in this early paper. After commenting ujion the 

 facts which prompted Dr. Leidy to liken the Judith River deposits to 

 the Wealden of Europe, the authors add : " Inasmuch, however, as 

 there certainly are some outliers of fresh-water Tertiary in these Bad 

 Lands, we would suggest that it is barely possible these remains may 

 belong to that epoch, though the shells appear to be all distinct species 

 from those found in the Tertiary at all the other localities in this 

 region." 



In a subsequent paper, read November 11th of that year and pub- 

 lished in the same volume (pp. 205-286), yielding to the weight of author- 

 ity of the eminent paleontologists who had studied the vertebrate and 

 vegetable remains, these authors, in the section drawn up on page 269, 

 place the yellowish sandstones of the Judith in their lowest member of 

 the Cretaceous (No. 1), along with the darker sandstones of the Big 

 Sioux, now so well known to characterize the Dakota group,' while the 

 lignite deposits of the Lower Yellowstone and Fort Union region are put 

 at the top of the Tertiary system and designated as Miocene. In an 

 elaborate paper by Messrs. James Hall and F. B. Meek in the " Memoirs 

 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences" communicated June 

 27, 1854,' a section is given in which the Cretaceous series is subdivided 

 into five members, corresponding substantially with that iiublished in the 

 Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy by Messrs. Meek and Ilayden 

 (Vol. VIII, 1856, p. 209), as also with that which appeared in the same 

 publication for December, 1801 (Vol. XIII, p. 419), and was reproduced 

 in Hayden's First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey 

 of the Territories for 1867, where, for the first time, the names by which 

 the groups have since become so widely known were attached. In this 

 earliest section of Meek and Hall the Bad Land formation of the Upper 

 Missouri is placed above the Cretaceous series, and is not subdivided 

 but is designated as " Eooene Tertiary " and assigned a maximum thick- 

 ness of 250 feet. 



On May 26, 1857, Dr. F. V. Hayden laid before the Philadelphia 



' This view seems to have beeu maintained by Mr. Meek as late as 1860. See Pro- 

 ceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia^ Vol. XII (April), 1860, 

 p. 130. 



2 Descriptions of now species of fossils from the Cretaceous formations of Nebraska, 

 &c., Vol. V, ia53, Part II, Art. xvii (extras dated 1856). 



