316 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



The Gilboa collections were submitted for examination to Sir Wil- 

 liam Dawson, of Montreal, then principal of McGill College, and in 

 his day an authority on the plants of the Devonian. Dawson placed 

 these trees in a genus of true ferns, represented by trees, and distin- 

 guished two species, Psaronius textilis and P. erianus. The genus 

 has in these later years been thoroughly studied; and it has been 

 found that the structure is quite different from that of the Gilboa 

 trees. Moreover, Psaronius belongs to the Carboniferous, the period 

 of our coal trees, and is much more recent by millions of years than 

 these Upper Devonian trees. The problem of the nature and rela- 

 tionship of our Gilboa trees was still left to science, and seemed in- 

 capable of solution until the summer of 1920. 



It had always been assumed that our Devonian trees had a scattered 

 distribution — no one dreamed of a vast and extensive forest. The old 

 locality had long since been covered up and the rocks at the level in 

 which the tree^ were discovered did not outcrop again in this area, 

 Nothing more was heard of these fossil stumps until in 1897, when 

 Prof. C. S. Prosser, then connected with the New York State Survey, 

 rej)orted finding some small specimens, from a higher horizon, lying 

 loose at the Manorkill Falls about a mile above Gilboa. Occasional 

 attempts since then to relocate this primeval forest of the Devonian 

 period were fruitless until the summer of 1920, when special effort 

 was made to add to the collection of Devonian plant material already 

 in the hands of the museum- In this year the efforts to relocate the 

 Schoharie forest or to find some additional evidence as to its extent 

 led to the discovery of upright tree stumps not in the original locality 

 but 6,400 feet south, at the higher level along the road in the vicinity 

 of the lower falls of the Manorkill, tributary to the Schoharie Creek. 

 (See pi. 4, fig. 2.) Five specimens were taken from this site. These 

 trees, as was the case with those first discovered, were found with 

 their bases resting in a bed of shale, black or greenish-black in color, 

 and representing the original mud in which the trees grew. This 

 tree locality, which constitutes the highest horizon in which these 

 stumps have been found, has an elevation of 1,120 feet above tide, 

 and when the Gilboa Reservoir is filled the flow line will be some 

 feet above this spot. The old locality, on the same side of the 

 Schoharie just above the old Gilboa bridge, had an elevation of 1,020 

 feet A. T., giving a difference of just 100 feet between these two 

 tree horizons. Since 1920, the city of New York has been doing 

 construction work at Gilboa, preparatory to impounding the waters 

 of the Schoharie Creek for the future use of its citizen^. The result- 

 ant reservoir will extend over a length of nearly 7 miles and will 

 drown the village of Gilboa and its vicinity, including the two above- 

 mentioned fossil-tree localities. In 1921, in the course of quarrying 

 in connection with the work on the dam, the old locality, which is 



