984 BERRY: MESOZOIC FLORA OF ATLANTIC COASTAL PLAIN 
Representing a tongue of chalky material 
| extending northward from about the 
sien ee eee | middle of the Selma chalk of western 
Alabama 
Eutaw formation... .Coffee sand member 
Tuscaloosa formation. 
No fossil plants have been recorded from these beds in Tennes- 
see except Salex eutawensis Berry, which is recorded from the s 
Coffee sand near Parsons, Decatur County, Tennessee. While 
the materials are prevailingly littoral or sublittoral in character 
with numerous small clay lenses, the bulk of the deposits are 
sands, and while these are often lignitic or contain petrified wood, 
determinable fossil plants are rare. The apparent scarcity of 
fossil plants is due in a measure to lack of exploration, since this 
area has not yet been surveyed as thoroughly as the balance of 
the Cretaceous of the Eastern Gulf area. The country is thinly 
settled, and is for the most part without large towns, railroads or 
good wagon roads. 
That eventually a considerable flora will be known from the 
Cretaceous of Tennessee is indicated by the results of a single 
season’s detailed work in McNairy and Hardin Counties by Mr. 
Bruce Wade, a student of the Johns Hopkins University, working 
under the auspices of the Tennessee Geological Survey. 
Determinable plants were obtained by him during the summer 
of 1915 at two horizons. The first of these is in the McNairy 
sand member of the Ripley formation and comes from two 
localities—one in the big cut on the Southern Railway west of 
Cypress and the other two and one half miles southwest of the 
town of Selmer, both in McNairy County. The second is i 
the Coffee sand member of the Eutaw formation and comes from 
the classic outcrop of the Upper Cretaceous at Coffee Bluff on 
the Tennessee River in Hardin County, first described by Safford 
in 1864.* 
The flora collected by Mr. Wade is too limited to warrant a 
botanical analysis but it is of considerable interest stratigraphically 
and it possesses an especial botanical interest since hardly any" 
se 
* Safford, J. M. Am. Jour. Sci. Il. 37: 360-372. 1864. 
