237 
p. 219) as occurring in what he is pleased to call the Lower Fort Union, 
but which includes the Lance Creek and Hell Creek beds and their sup- 
posed equivalents. One might almost imagine it to be a list of plants 
found in a recently investigated corner of the world on the latitude of 
Louisiana. On page 225 it is stated that a number of species are yet liv- 
ing, while others are so obviously close to living species as to be separated 
with difficulty. Such inert organisms, subject also to all the vicissitudes 
of life on the land, can hardly be regarded as good indicators of the pas- 
sage of time. Since that epoch the genera, families, and even orders of 
warm-blooded vertebrates have almost completely changed. 
The opinion held by some distinguished geologists and paleontologists 
that the so-called Laramie beds, or all of these except the lowest, belong 
to the Tertiary appears to have rested until recently, at least, mostly en 
the statements of Professor Leo Lesquereux, the paleontologist of the 
Hayden Survey. He and Dr. Hayden at first regarded these deposits as 
belonging to the Miocene, but later as beionging to the lowermost Eocene. 
Passing over Lesquereux’s earlier writings I refer to one of his latest 
utterances on the subject, found in the eighth volume of the monographs 
of the Geological Survey of the Territories, part three, published in 1883. 
On page 109 Lesquereux makes this statement: 
The flora of the Laramie group has a relation, remarkably defined, 
with that of Sézanne. 
Now, the flora of Sézanne, a town in France. comes from beds that 
belong to the Thanetian, at the very base of the Lower Eocene. Les- 
quereux’s statement is followed by a table of the species which he sup- 
posed had been found in the Laramie at various localities. The beds at 
some of these localities are now known to be somewhat older than any 
Laramie, those at one or two localities a little younger than Laramie. In 
the table is a column in which are checked off the species of Laramie 
plants that Lesquereux believed to be identical with or closely related to 
species found at Sézanne; in another column the species that he supposed 
were found also in the Oligocene of Europe; in a third column those that 
he believed to occur also in Huropean Miocene deposits. Naturally, one 
would expect, in view of Lesquereux’s statement quoted above, that the 
identical and closely related species of the Sézanne column would out- 
number those of the Miocene column. On the contrary, only three species 
were regarded by him as identical with Sézanne species, while twenty- 
