FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



TERTIARY FAUNA OF FLORIDA 



the Chipola beds and the Oligocene of St. Domingo. About half the species 

 in the Chipola marl are peculiar to it, and of the others the largest percentage 

 is found in the Tampa silex beds, while in the subsequent Oak Grove sands 

 twenty-four per cent, of the Chipola species occur. Thirty-five species survive 

 to the existing fauna. 



In 1893 * Dr. A. F. Foerste published some studies on the Chipola Miocene 

 of Bainbridge, Georgia, and Alum Bluff, Florida. These observations, while 

 not discreditable for the time when they were published, in the light of more 

 thorough explorations and studies which have followed them may be termed 

 largely obsolete, and frequently Dr. Foerste's speculations have not proved 

 happy. Their chief importance lies in the observations quoted from others, 

 especially those of Pumpelly, who recognized accurately the residual character 

 of the red clay deposits between Bainbridge and Alum Bluff, which had been 

 hastily included by some writers in the Lafayette, but are largely Oligocene. 

 The proposition, advanced by Dr. Foerste, that the Chipola and the Chesapeake 

 formations were " to a considerable extent contemporaneous," in view of the 

 section at Alum Bluff was not defensible at the time, and no one will regard 

 it as needing further criticism at present. 



In the course of this paper Dr. Foerste gives a list of species from a locality 

 near Bainbridge which he calls " Gastropod Gully," but which he does not 

 more precisely locate. On a visit to Bainbridge the collections were found to 

 have been removed and, in the absence of Professor Pumpelly, the locality 

 could not be identified. Applications for an opportunity to examine the speci- 

 mens made to Dr. Foerste by mail failed to elicit any response, and the real 

 horizon to which his fossils should be referred remains doubtful. It is prob- 

 able that the majority of them were, as he supposed, of Chipola age, while 

 others may have been residual from superincumbent beds. I have understood 

 from verbal communications of Dr. Brooks and others that most of them were 

 of the nature of silicious pseudomorphs. These fossils should not be con- 

 founded with the Chattahoochee fossils discovered by Vaughan at Russell 

 Springs on the Flint River and already referred to, which belong to a much 

 older series of beds. 



LIST OF CHIPOLA FOSSILS. 



A, lower bed, Alum Bluff; B, one mile below Bailey's Ferry (now the county 

 bridge) over the Chipola River; C, Chipola River at Ten-Mile Creek, and upper bed 

 at McClellan's farm ; * also recent. A few forms are added from Miss Maury's list. 



* Am. Journ. Sci., xlvi., pp. 245-254, Oct., 1893. 



