BERRY: MESOZOIC FLORA OF ATLANTIC COASTAL PLAIN 67 
is important because I regard the Ripley as about the same age, 
but it cannot perhaps be settled in the present state of our know- 
ledge. I am disposed, however, to regard them as representing 
the Santonian substage or upper Emscherian. 
The present Ripley flora shows no forms that are common to 
the abundant Wilcox or lower Eocene flora of the Mississippi 
embayment region—the only forms doubtfully recorded from 
Eocene in other regions being Geonomites Schimpert and the 
wholly worthless Halymenttes major. Despite this lack of identical 
species, which might be expected, the Ripley flora does contain 
a number of types which become differentiated subsequently and 
are characteristic elements of the lower Eocene flora in south- 
eastern North America. These are all angiosperms—the pteri- 
dophytes and coniferophytes all having become extinct both as to 
genera and species, or restricted to other regions in the case of 
some of the coniferophyte genera, before the dawn of the Eocene. 
Eocene praenuncial characters are seen in the Ripley Geonomiies, 
Drophyllum, Celtis, Artocarpus, Capparis, Dalbergia, Gleditsio- 
phyllum, Cedrela, Dillenites, Ternstroemites, Lauraceae, Myrcia, 
Chrysophyllum, Bumelia, and Apocynophyllum. Many of these 
are, of course, coastal types that might be expected to persist in a 
but slightly changed environment but the same is true as regards 
habitat of the majority of earlier Upper Cretaceous floras of the 
Atlantic Coastal Plain so that these differences in the Ripley 
flora as compared with antecedent floras may truly be regarded as 
of chronologic value. 
Detailed comparisons with the extensive Wilcox flora shows 
many striking differences. In the latter the old Mesozoic coni- 
ferophyte elements are all gone and there are in the Ripley num- 
erous genera of angiosperms commonly considered as temperate 
forest types such as Salix, Fagus, Celtis, Liriodendron, Platanus, 
Acer, Cornophyllum and Andromeda, which are apparently lacking 
along the Eocene coast of the Mississippi Gulf, although present 
in the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains region at that time. 
This would seem to indicate some climatic distinction between 
Ripley and Wilcox conditions and I am disposed to so consider it, 
in which event the Ripley would be more distinctly temperate 
than the Wilcox. 
