288 STANTON 



have passed through my hands, and have been described by me in a 

 memoir to be pubhshed by the U. S. Geological Survey. This flora 

 has also been carefully studied by Prof. L. F. Ward, who has published 

 an important paper upon it which forms part of the Sixth Annual 

 Report of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. It is entitled 

 "A Synopsis of the Flora of the Laramie Group," but it really contains 

 few of the Lower or true Laramie plants, and is chiefly descriptive of 

 the Upper Laramie or Fort Union flora, of which it affords the most 

 important review yet published. In this flora are a number of living 

 species, such as Corylus americana, C. rosirata, Onoclea sensihilis, 

 etc., and many species found in the Tertiary rocks of northern North 

 America, Greenland, and Europe, in strata called Micoene by Heer, but 

 shown by J. Starkie Gardner to be Eocene. 



The flora of the Lower or true Laramie has been made known to me 

 by collections from Evanston, Black Butte, Bitter Creek, Fisher's 

 Peak, Walsenburg, Canon City, Crested Butte, etc. These show that 

 there is almost nothing in common between the Fort Union and Lara- 

 mie floras, and that the two divisions of the so-called Laramie group, 

 judging from their fossil plants, which are very numerous, must be 

 regarded as distinct formations. The older flora contains no living 

 species, but has many things in common with the Upper Cretaceous 

 coal-bearing rocks of Vancouver Island and Washington Territory, 

 is associated with marine and brackish water shells among which 

 Inoceramus is conspicuous, and I have, therefore, called it Cretaceous 

 and the upper member of that system. 



The following is from the second paper cited: 



The term Laramie Group was first used by Mr. Clarence King, 

 who applied it to a series of sandstones and shales containing beds of 

 coal exposed at Point of Rocks, Black Butte, and other places along 

 the line of the Union Pacific Railroad, and having great development 

 in Colorado and Wyoming. Mr. King considered this the uppermost 

 member of the Cretaceous system, and excluded from it the Fort 

 Union beds of Hayden, which, on the evidence I furnished him, he 

 agreed with me in considering Tertiary. I called the Fort Union 

 group Miocene because I identified it with the plant-bearing beds of 

 Mackenzie's River, Disco Island, Greenland, etc., of which the flora 

 had been studied by Prof. Oswald Heer and was by him called Miocene. 

 This flora, to which I shall again refer, has since been shown by Mr. 

 J. Starkie Gardner to be Eocene. The Fort Union flora has many 

 species in common with the Eocene beds of the Island of Mull, 

 Bournemouth, etc., and holds undoubtedly the same geological posi- 

 tion. Dr. Hayden accepted the term Laramie Group, but made it 

 include his Fort Union beds. 



