?i 



LATER CRETACEOUS AND KAINOZOIC. 



211 



of 

 id 



especially collections made by myself near Calgary in 

 1883, and by officers of the Geological Survey in 1884, 

 have been described in the "Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of Canada," vols. iii. and iv. 



In studying these fossil plants, I have found that 

 there is a close correspondence between those of tiie 

 Lower and Upper Laramie in the two areas above re- 

 ferred to respectively, and that the flora of the Lower 

 Laramie is somewhat distinct from that of the Upper, 

 the former being especially rich in certain aquatic plants, 

 and the latter much more copious on the whole, and 

 much more rich in remains of forest-trees. This is, how- 

 ever, possibly an effect rather of local conditions than of 

 any considerable change in the flora, since some Upper 

 Laramie forms recur as low as the Belly River series of the 

 Cretaceous, which is believed on stratigraphical grounds 

 to be considerably older than the Lower Laramie. 



With reference to the correlation of these beds with 

 those of the United States, some difficulty has arisen from 

 the tendency of palaeobotanists to refer the plants of the 

 Upper Laramie to the Miocene age, although in the re- 

 ports of Mr. Clarence King, the late director of the 

 United States Geological Survey, these beds are classed, 

 on the evidence of stratigraphy and animal fossils, as 

 Upper Cretaceous. More recently, however, and partly 

 perhaps in consequence of the views maintuined by the 

 writer since 1875, some change of opinion has occurred, 

 and Dr. Newberry and Mr. Lescpiereux seem now in- 

 clined to admit that what in Canada we recognise as 

 Upper Laramie is really Eocene, and the Lower Laramie 

 either Cretaceous or a transition group between this and 

 the Eocene. In a recent paper * Dr. Newberry gives a 

 comparative table, in which he correlates tiie Lower 



* Newberry, " Transactions of the New York Academy," February, 

 1886. 



