186 BERRY : MeEsoZzOIC FLORA OF THE COASTAL PLAIN 
report * petrified wood and lignite are recorded along the Cape Fear 
river about 18 miles above Fayetteville. Kerr publishing in 
1875+ writes of the lignitic beds of the Cape Fear river and 
mentions the occurrence of ‘trunks, limbs and leaves of trees,” 
correctly correlating the deposits with similar exposures on the 
Neuse river near Goldsboro, North Carolina. 
Darton, publishing in 1895, ina footnote on page 517, says 
that Ward had discovered plant remains of Potomac age along the 
Cape Fear river, although the latter author in a recent publica- 
tion § states that no characteristic fossil plants have been found in 
the Potomac of North Carolina. On page 390 of the same work 
occurs the following paragraph : 
“The higher beds farthest down the river yield imperfect 
specimens of dicotyledonous leaves having affinities with those of 
the Newer Potomac and are doubtless of that age, but those at 
Lafayette || and for ten or perhaps twenty miles below, though 
apparently barren, closely resemble Older Potomac strata, but are 
transgressed by marine deposits which occupy the top of the 
bluffs nearly the whole distance.”’ 
The first part of this paragraph refers, I suppose, to the lig- 
nitic layers such as occur at Big Sugar Loaf Landing, fifty miles 
below Fayetteville. No leaves appear to have been discovered 
near Fayetteville, where they are abundant and well preserved. 
If the latter part of the paragraph just quoted refers to the over- 
lying Pleistocene it may possibly be true; if it refers to the lamin- 
ated clays and sands of Cretaceous age, it should be added by 
way of comment, that while they do transgress the Older Potomac 
at several points, by no means are they uniformly present along 
the tops of the bluffs, and they are far from being typically marine 
deposits. Farthest down the river, where the lignitic Cretaceous 
first appears below the typically Marine Cretaceous, it contains 
sharks’ teeth and other marine remains, but as you come up the 
river, getting lower and lower in the formation, it becomes more 
* McCLENAHAN, in Emmons, Rep, Geol. Surv. North Carolina, 173. 1852. 
4 Warp, L. F. U. 5S. Geol. Surv. Monog: 48: 374. 1906. 
\| This must be intended for Fayetteville, as there is no town of Lafayette on the 
Cape Fear river. 
