318 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1928 



left with a forest of fossil stumps and have been little better oflf 

 than were Professors Hall and Dawson in 1869. B_y the merest 

 chance, Dr. Rudolf Ruedemann, State paleontologist, who was on the 

 ground with some other collectors in the summer of 1920, came 

 across a slab of dark shale containing seeds along the edge of the 

 Schoharie Creek in the vicinity of the Manorkill Falls. (See pi. 3, 

 fig. 1.) The slab was traced to the bed of shale from which it was 

 derived and a number of good specimens were obtained. Later in 

 that summer the writer and an assistant worked this bed of shale 

 and a fairly large collection of excellent material was obtained, 

 including not only the seeds, but another kind of fruiting body, bits 

 of foliage and roots. Further efforts in the summer of 1923 led to 

 the discovery of a new locality about 30 feet south of the original 

 exposure, and in this and the following year our already unique 

 collection was considerably augmented in both quantity and quality. 

 Collecting in the spring of 1925 showed both localities to be prac- 

 tically exhausted, and besides this whole area will eventually be 

 under the deep waters of the Gilboa reservoir. 



In addition to stumps, portions of the trunks of these fossil trees 

 were found in 1920 and later. In the early summer of 1923 bases 

 of stumps were found in Riverside Quarry with the long, radiating 

 straplike roots attached, so that there could no longer be any doubt 

 that these trees grew in situ. In 1925 three specimens of the outer 

 bark showing petiolar scars were brought in by Mr. R. Veenfliet, jr., 

 a local collector. The greatest numbers of the trees comprising these 

 ancient forests were of this Gilboa tree type, but evidences of two 

 other kinds of trees have been found. One is a Protolepidodendron., 

 a lycopodlike tree, similar to the Naples tree, Protolepidodendron 

 prinvaevum (Rogers), known for so many years from the Portage 

 beds of central New York. This tree has not yet been described. 

 In the fall of 1925 two specimens of another type of tree with long, 

 grasslike leaves on the trunk were collected in Riverside Quarry, 

 and they have been described under the name SigiUaHa ? gilboensis 

 (N. Y. State Museum Bull. 267, 1926) as another lycopod type- of 

 tree. 



In the early summer of that year a rootstock was found in the 

 same quarry, which may belong to either of the last two mentioned 

 types of trees. 



2. UPPER DEVONIAN GEOGRAPHY AND PRESENT GEOLOGY 



The Gilboa trees afford an index to the geography of the western 

 Catskills and the Schoharie Valley during the late Devonian period 

 to which they belong. During these times, the present Catskill 

 Mountains formed the low shore line of a shallow sea ; and the con- 

 tinental land lay off' to the east of the Catskills, extending far into 



