WARi..] COLLECTIONS FROM LOWER LARAMIE STRATA. 537 



proper to state that tbe record I Lave made will not be complete until 

 I shall bave bestowed a large amount of attention and study upon the 

 material in hand. Tbe specimens flffured can scarcely be said to have 

 been selected as representative of my collections, although they are so 

 to some extent, but they rather indicate what forms had been suffi- 

 ciently studied at the time I began to prepare this paper to warrant 

 pulilisbin;^ tbe figures. The names which I have affixed to them are 

 therefore provisional only, and subject to alteration in the course of 

 the preparation of my final report, which has been merely arrested loug 

 enough to enable nie to prepare and present in the present synopsis some 

 general considerations which would necessarily be crowded out of the 

 detailed work. 



My collections were all made in two seasons, that of 1881 and that of 

 1883. On tbe first of these occasions I visited a number of the locali- 

 ties belonging to the lower series situated in Colorado and Wyoming. 

 On the second occasion I visited the valleys of the Lower Yellowstone 

 and Upper Missouri Rivers, and found fossil plants in what are un- 

 doubtedly typical Fort Uniou strata. The itinerary aud a general de- 

 scription of the field work of these two seasons have been given in my 

 administrative reports for those years.' 



COLLECTIONS FROM LOWER LARAMIE STRATA. 



The collections made at Golden, Colorado, have not proved particu- 

 larly rich, and probably very little will be found in them that has not 

 already been reported from that locality. Large palm leaves {^abal 

 Camphellii) aud numerous fragments of leaves of Platanus, Ficus, etc., 

 were found in a coarse friable sandstone, either ferruginous and light 

 red, or siliceous and gray or white, in the valley between the Front 

 Eange and the basaltic Table Mountain on the east. These strata 

 stand nearly vertical and are in immediate juxtaposition to tbe pro- 

 ductive coal beds on the west. The coal mines themselves are worked 

 in vertical beds which have Cretaceous strata on the west and these 

 coarse sandstones on the east, showing that the direction from east 

 to west represents the descent through the several layers and that 

 the coal veins are at the very base of the Laramie at this place. The 

 strata are conformable, aud both the Cretaceous and the Laramie are 

 tilted so as to be approximately vertical. At the base of South Table 

 Mountain the strata are horizontal, aud the line dividing the vertical 

 from the horizontal strata could be detected at certaiu points. A meas- 

 urement from this line to the base of the coal seam was made at one 

 place and showed 1,700 feet of the upturned edges of Laramie strata. 

 It is probable that we here have the very base of tbe formation. 

 The geology of Golden is very complicated, but my observations led 



' Tbira ADiiual Report of the United States Geological Survey, I881-'82 ; pp. 26-29. 

 Fiftb ilo., I8ri3-'84, pp. 55-M. 



