SYNOPSIS OF THE FLORA OF THE LARAMIE GROUP. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The object of this paper is twofold : first, to offer, as its title im- 

 plies, a synopsis, or coudeused account, of the flora of the Laramie 

 group, as that formation is now understood ; and, secondly, to give a 

 few illustrations of this flora from new material or from material more 

 ample and abundant than has heretofore existed. 



Mr. Leo Lesquereux, in his "Tertiary Flora,"' describes a large 

 number of plants belonging to this group, but he here argues for the 

 Tertiary age of these plants and regards the group as Eocene; he 

 therefore makes no attempt to keep them separate from those derived 

 from higher and still acknowledged Tertiary beds. In his last work, 

 on "The Cretaceous and Tertiary Floras,"^ he attempts to introduce a 

 "table of distribution" of the plants of the Laramie group, but in doing 

 so he fails to recognize the Fort Union forms as belonging to that group, 

 although the identity of the two groups had been admitted by Dr. 

 Haydeu in his annual reports and was reasserted in his letter trans- 

 mitting Mr. Lesquereux's " Tertiary Flora " to the Secretary of the In- 

 terior for publication. He preferred to accept the view of Mr. Clarence 

 King (who admitted that he had not visited the Fort Union beds), as 

 exi^ressed in his Report of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth 

 Parallel, Volume I, pp. 353, 354, and which rested upon the determina- 

 tions by Dr. Newberry of certain vegetable remains of Miocene type. 

 Mr. King believed this formation to be equivalent to the White Eiver 

 Miocene, and Dr. Newberry referred all his Fort Union jflants to the 

 Miocene. The only localities which he admits as constituting the plant 

 beds of the Laramie group known at that date are those of Colorado, 

 the Raton Mountains, Placiere, Henry's Fork, Barrel Springs, Fort 

 Ellis, Spring Canon, Black Buttes, Point of Rocks, and Yellowstone 

 Lake. This excludes Carbon and Evanston, which I shall also embrace 

 in the Laramie, and there are several other localities from which fossil 

 plants have been obtained that belong with little doubt to the same 

 great system. 



' Contributions to the Fossil Flora of the Western Territories, Part II. The Ter- 

 tiary Flora. By Leo Lesquereux. Report of the United States Geological Survey of 

 the Territories, F. V. Hayden, United States geologist-in-charge. Vol. VII. Wash- 

 ington, 1878. 



» Contributions to the Fossil Flora of the Western Territories, Part III. The Cre- 

 taceous and Tertiary Floras. By Leo Lesquereux. Report of the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden, geologist-in-charge. Vol. VIII. 

 Washington, 1883. f405") 



