GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 347 



nection with every bed of lignite formed within this sandstone, and 

 show by the profusion of their remains the remarkable place which they 

 have in the distribution of the flora of the Eocene epoch. Their fossil 

 remains are most abundant in the Lignitic of Fort Union, where the 

 largest leaves of Sabal have as yet been observed. At the Eaton a 

 good half of the specimens represent fragments of leaves, of petioles, 

 of fruits of this species. At Golden they are found in the same pro- 

 portion, and at Black Butte splendid specimens of palms are mixed 

 with dicotyledonous leaves in the shale overlying the main coal; while 

 the bed with Saurian bones and shells, about 150 feet higher in the 

 measures, has Sabal leaves, too, less abundant, however, than the 

 shale of the main coal. At E vanston, in the under sandstone, a quantity 

 of fruits referable to palm has been found, and remains of the same 

 kind are a marked feature of the scanty flora as yet known from the 

 Arkansas and Colorado Lignitic formation. It might be argued that if 

 some remains of palms have been found in connection with strata 

 recognized as Cretaceous, these plants might as well be admitted as 

 characteristic of Cretaceous age in our Lignitic. I do not know of a 

 single case positively ascertained of palm remains in the Cretaceous. 

 But even if we had any, their abundant distribution in the vegetation of our 

 Eocene is sufficient proof that this class of plants had already acquired 

 at that epoch a remarkable development.. Its origin may be discovered 

 later by scarce remains in the Cretaceous ; its preponderance in the 

 vegetation of the Lignitic attests a more recent formation.* 



The Tertiary groups of Europe are not as yet clearly limited. Many 

 of the Lignitic strata which have furnished remains of fossil-i^lauts to 

 European paleontology were at first referred to the Eocene. Unger, 

 for example, places in this formation the fossil-plants of Eadoboj, in, 

 Croatia, of Haering, in Tyrol, of Parshlung, of Sotzka, now referred to 

 the Lower Miocene, Thus, too, the Bovey coal of England, which was 

 considered contemporaneous to the Eocene of Wight, is now admitted 

 as Miocene. " The Tertiary deposits have been formed in basins of 

 limited areas, and therefore the characters of their flora are not identical, 

 even for contemporaneous deposits, on account of the diversity of the 

 vegetation at various places and under various circumstances. This 

 explains a difficulty of identification of strata which may be met per- 

 haps in trying to circumscribe the upper limits of our Eocene. As yet, 

 in this formation, homogeneity of the essential characters is recognized 

 everywhere in its flora, and when it is compared with that of some 

 locality positively ascertained as Eocene in Europe, it indicates, too, 

 points of identity remarkable enough. Such is the flora of Mount 

 Promina, where a fern found at Golden in splendid specimens is 

 described by Professor Ettinghausen as Splienojpteris eocenica. In the 

 same paper a species of Myrica, whose leaves appear to have been 

 found in profusion at the same locality, is described and figured, iudi- 



* Vegetable paleontology has not any more recent and more positive records on this 

 subject than those furnished by Schimper, (Veget. Pal., vol. ii, 1S71.) This work de- 

 scribes twenty-four species of palms (fossil) in the three genera Chamaerojfs, Sahal, and 

 Flahellaria, twelve of which are from the Miocene, ten from the Eocene, and two, Fla- 

 iellaria lorujirachis, ITxG., aud F. chamccropifoUa, Gopp, from strata considered as Creta- 

 ceous. Of these two species, Schimper says that the first, from the length of its rachis, 

 is evidently a type of a peculiar genus, and that the other, whose racliis is unknown, 

 cannot, on that account, be positively referred to any type. The author still describes 

 twenty-two species of palms in other genera, aU from the Tertiary, mostly Eocene, 

 aud twenty-three known from stems only, aud these, too, all Tertiary. Admitting all 

 the references as exact, this makes sixty-seven species of palms described from tho 

 Tertiary, and two from the Cretaceous. 



