80 SIR J- WILLIAM DAWSON ON THE 



states his belief that, while related to the Shasta fossils, those of the Queen Charlotte 

 Islands may be as high in the series as the Gault of Europe. 



At a little later date, rocks approximately of this age were found by Dr. G-. M. Daw- 

 son in the inland part of British Columbia at Tatlayoco Lake and elsewhere. The 

 fossils obtained from these rocks were noticed by Mr. Whiteaves in 1882 in the Transac- 

 tions of this Society. ' 



By these researches, extending from 1872 to 1884, the existence both in the Queen Char- 

 lotte Islands and in the interior of British Columbia of beds of Lower Cretaceous age was 

 established, and their correlation with the Shasta beds of California and the Lower 

 Cretaceous of Europe defined ; but their flora had as yet appeared only in connection with 

 the coal-bearing rocks of the Queen Charlotte Islands. A new and unexpected light, and 

 one pregnant as we shall see with important geological results, was thrown on this sub- 

 ject by the discovery of plant-bearing beds in the Cretaceous rocks folded into the plica- 

 tions of that part of the Itocky Mountains included between the 49th parallel and the 

 Bow Eiver. 



In the summer of 1884 collections of fossil plants were placed in my hands by Dr. 

 Gr. M. Dawson, from beds which he believed to be stratigraphically in the lower part of 

 the Cretaceous of the Rocky Mountains, as exposed in the Crow's Nest and Kootanie 

 Passes, and which I at once recognized as indicating a subdivision of the Cretaceous 

 lower than any which in that region had alforded fossil plants, and approaching in the 

 character of its flora to the Wealden of Europe. This he had provisionally named the 

 Kootanie series, and over it was another group, the Mill Creek series, with fossil plants a 

 little more modern in aspect, but still apparently older than the beds from Peace and Pine 

 Rivers, described in a paper in these Transactions in 1883 and referred to the Niobrara 

 and Benton, and possibly in part Dakota, groups of the United States geologists. They 

 connected themselves in my mind with the Lower Cretaceous of the Queen Charlotte 

 Islands and with the beds which Tyson had called Wealden in Maryland, and which- I 

 had seen in his company many years before. 



These plants were of so great interest that it was thought best to describe them at 

 once, though occurring in a formation evidently richly stored with vegetable fossils and 

 which contained beds of coal likely to be worked, and it was evident that the collections 

 which had been made in a rapid reconnaissance of the legion were only a first instalment 

 of what might be expected. They were accordingly described and the more important 

 species figured in a paper published in these Transactions in 1885.' 



In this paper I referred these plants to the Lower Cretaceous, placing them as equiva- 

 lents of the plant-bearing beds of the Queen Charlotte Islands, of the so-called Wealden of 

 Maryland,' of the Komé group of Heer in Greenland, and of the Neocomian of Europe. 

 I also indicated the close relationship of some of the species with those described by Heer 

 from beds in Siberia referred to the Jurassic. I remarked on the importance of the dis- 

 covery, and stated that the knowledge of this flora " will form a sure basis from which 



' Report Geo). Survey, 187r)-7(>, p. 253. "Whiteaves, Trans. E. S., Vol. I., Sec. IV., p. 81. Contributions to Cana- 

 dian I'alseontology, Vol. I., Part II., p. 151. See also I)r. G. M. Dawson in Am. .Tournai of Science, Vol. XXXVIII., 

 p. 120. 



- Vol. III., Soc. IV., p. 1. 



• Now known as the Potomac Group, whose plants have been fully ilescriboil by Fontaine. 



