16 J. W. DAWSON ON CRETACEOUS AND TERTIARY FLORAS 
genous and endogenous trees akin to those of the Tertiary. On the west coast a consi- 
derable gap appears to exist between the middle and upper Cretaceous, and on the 
east side of the Rocky Mountains, where the Cretaceous reappears and occupies a great 
area, the middle part, the Niobrara group of the American geologists, is almost everywhere 
of a strictly marine character and destitute of fossil plants. The recent researches of Dr. 
Selwyn and Dr. G. M. Dawson have, however, shown that toward the north, in the vicinity 
of Peace River, in the sediment deposited along the shore of the old Niobrara Sea, there 
are beds rich in fossil plants belonging to a fauna older than that of Nanaimo and inter- 
mediate between it and that of the Dakota group further south, the fossil plants of which 
have been so well figured and described by Lesquereux.* In the Bow and Belly River 
region, beds of the Pierre group, or that next following the Niobrara in ascending order, 
have also yielded a few fossil plants. 
In our Western Territories these undoubted Cretaceous beds are overlaid by a widely 
spread formation, holding lignite coal and fossil plants, which has been known in Canada 
as the Lignite Tertiary series, and in the United States as the Laramie and Fort Union 
eroups. Its fossil plants, as they occur in the Mackenzie River district, have been 
described by Heer; as they occur at the Souris River, they have been described by the 
writer in the Reports of the Boundary Survey and the Geological Survey. The flora of 
these beds is undoubtedly distinct from that of the underlying Cretaceous and of later date ; 
but the associated animal fossils have induced many geologists to include the Laramie in 
the upper part of the Cretaceous, while the fossil plants are of so modern aspect that they 
have been held to be Miocene. 
The truth appears to be that they constitute a transition from the upper part of the 
Cretaceous to the Eocene, and that the analogies which have been sought to be established 
between them and European Miocene deposits are altogether fallacious, and based on the 
similarity of an American flora of early Eocene date with one found in Europe at a later 
period. This question and the bearing of it on the so-called Miocene of Greenland and 
other northern regions will be discussed in the sequel. 
Lastly, on the mainland of British Columbia there are ancient lake basins of Tertiary 
and probably Miocene age, which contain a still later flora, associated with insect remains 
These beds lie below extensive volcanic accumulations in many places, and are probably 
contemporaneous with the Truckee Miocene of King. 
The whole of the specimens collected by the Geological Survey, and representing a 
series of consecutive floras extending from the Lower Cretaceous to the Miocene, have been 
placed in my hands by Dr. Selwyn, and I have been engaged for some time in a careful 
study of them, now nearly completed, and some portion of the results of which I propose 
to state in the present paper,—referring more particularly to the plants included under the 
following geographical heads :— 
1.— Cretaceous of the West Coast. 
In the Middle Cretaceous of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the most characteristic plant 

* Cretaceous Flora; Hayden’s Geological Survey of the Territories of the United States. 
