140 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Miocene! period, so that there can be no doubt as to their Eocene age. 
In like manner, in British Columbia, as will appear in the sequel, there 
are lacustrine beds with a flora of Oligocene or Miocene age, and which 
is quite distinct from that of the formation which forms the subject of 
this paper.” 
At the same time it must be admitted that in the laying down of 
deposits of so great thickness, and covering necessarily a very long time, 
there may have been important changes in the flora, and ae in an 
estuarine series in the vicinity of the Pacific coast on the one hand, and 
of extensive mountain ranges on the other, there may have been great 
local diversities, and the intermingling of plants of coastal flats with those 
of elevated mountain valleys. On the other hand, there may have been 
an equability of climate permitting the co-existence of types now widely 
separated. Independently of the fact that we are here near the dividing 
line between Cretaceous and Tertiary times, and may therefore expect a 
transition flora, these are circumstances which may well give rise to diffi- 
cult questions, awaiting their ultimate settlement till the succession of the 
beds has been more definitely ascertained and larger collections have 
been made from different localities and horizons. 
In the meantime I shall hope to show that we have in the Burrard 
Bay collections at least the pre-intimations of an early Tertiary flora, 
occupying the space between the Cretaceous flora of the Nanaimo series 
and the Oligocene or Miocene flora of the Similkameen district. 
The specimens referred to in this paper are all from a limited locality 
in the vicinity of Burrard’s Inlet, and therefore from near the northern 
margin of the estuarine formation referred to. 
The earliest is a small collection made by Prof. Lawson, of the 
Geological Survey of Canada, a notice of which was contributed by the 
author to the Report of the Survey for 1890, with the remark that in so 
far as any conclusion could be based on so small a collection, the plants 
might be regarded as of Upper Laramie or Eocene age. 
Some additional specimens were afterwards collected by Dr. G. M. 
Dawson, by Mr. James Macoun and others, in the neighbourhood of Van- 
couver, at Hastings Station and Stanley Park, and a few determinable 
leaves were obtained from the core of a bore-hole sunk at Hastings. 
The somewhat larger collections made subsequently by Mr. G. F. 
Monckton, of Vancouver, from the shores of Burrard’s Inlet, he has 
kindly placed in my hands for study.” 
These collections no doubt represent very imperfectly the flora of 
the formation, and, owing to the fragile character of the matrix, few of 

1 Trans. Royal Society of Canada, 1886 —Fossil Plants of Laramie. 
2 Trans. Royal Society of Canada, 1890 —Fossil Plants of ‘Similkameen, etc. 
3 Additional collections made by Mr. C. Hill-Tout while this paper was in pre- 
paration, will also be mentioned below. 
