20 SIR J. W. DAWSON ON THE FOSSIL PLANTS 
divisions as follows :—(1) The Lower Laramie or St. Mary River series, corresponding 
in its character and fossils to the Lower or Bad Lands division of the other area. (2) A 
Middle division, the Willow Creek beds, consisting of clays, mostly reddish, and not 
recognized in the other area. (3) The Upper Laramie cr Porcupine Hills division, corre- 
sponding in fossils and to some extent in mineral character to the Souris River beds of the 
eastern area. 
The fossil plants collected by Dr. G. M. Dawson in the eastern area were noticed by 
the writer in an appendix to Dr. Dawson’s Report on the 49th parallel, in 1875, and a 
collection subsequently made by Dr. Selwyn was described in the report of the Geologi- 
cal Survey of Canada for 1879-80. Those of the western area, and especially collections 
made by myself near Calgary in 1883, were shortly noticed in my paper in Vol. III of 
these Transactions. The present paper includes a revision of this former work, with the 
results of the study of new material collected, principally by Mr. J. B. Tyrrell and Mr. T. 
C. Weston of the Geological Survey, in the western area, and submitted to me along with 
the previous collections by the Director of the Geological Survey. 
In studying these fossil plants, I have found that there is a close correspondence 
between those of the Lower and Upper Laramie in the two areas above referred to 
respectively, and that the flora of the Lower Laramie is somewhat distinct from that of 
the Upper, the former being especially rich in certain aquatic plants, and the latter much 
more copious on the whole, and much more rich in remains of forest trees. This is, how- 
ever, possibly an effect rather of local conditions than of any considerable change in the 
flora, since some Upper Laramie forms recur as low as the Belly River series of the 
Cretaceous, which is believed on stratigraphical grounds to be considerably older than 
the Lower Laramie. 
With reference to the correlation of these beds with those of the United States, some 
difficulty has arisen from the tendency of palæobotanists to refer the plants of the Upper 
Laramie to the Miocene age, although in the reports of Mr. Clarence King, the late 
Director of the United States Geological Survey, these beds are classed on the evidence of 
stratigraphy and animal fossils, as Upper Cretaceous. More recently, however, and partly 
perhaps in consequence of the views maintained by the writer since 1875, some change 
of opinion has occurred, and Dr. Newberry and Mr. Lesquereux seem now inclined to 
admit that what in Canada we recognize as Upper Laramie, is really Eocene, and the 
Lower Laramie either Cretaceous or a transition group between this and the Eocene. In 
a recent paper, Dr. Newberry gives a comparative table, in which he correlates the 
Lower Laramie with the Upper Cretaceous of Vancouver Island and the Faxce and © 
Maestricht beds of Europe, while he regards the Upper Laramie as equivalent to European 
Eocene. Except in so far as the equivalence of the Lower Laramie and Vancouver Island 
beds is concerned, this corresponds very nearly with the conclusions of the writer in his 
paper read to this Society last year,” namely, that we must either regard the Laramie as 
a transition Cretaceo-Hocene group, or must institute our line of separation in the Willow 
Creek or Middle Laramie division, which has, however, as yet afforded no fossil plants. 
I doubt, however, the equivalence of the Vancouver beds and the Lower Laramie, except 


' Newberry, Trans. N. Y. Academy, Feb., 1886. 
* Tbid., Vol. iii. 
