176 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOÖLOGY. 
In the islands of Antigua, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, of the Wind- 
ward Island group, which are quite different in generic structural 
character from the Antilles and Virgin Islands, thero are vast deposits 
of stratified tuffs which belong to several epochs. The lower portions 
of these are suggostively like the Richmond beds in arrangement, al- 
though entirely different in composition. We are not prepared, how* 
ever, to assert their identity at present, although there is somo evidence 
of synchronous origin, as some of them in Antigua clearly underlie 
fossiliferous beds similar to those elsewhere overlying the Richmond: 
The whole structure of the island of Barbados below the veneering of 
reef rock is composed of an intensely folded land-derived formation 0 
littoral land-derived shales and sandstones (the Scotland beds) which 
closely resemble the Richmond Eocene formation of Jamaica and the 
other localities mentioned, and in our opinion is identical in age with 
them, as will be shown in a future paper. 
The widely distributed occurrence of such beds of land-der 
material at the base of the Tertiary in the Great Antilles and Barbados; 
is suggestive of the existence and destruction of extensive land area 
concerning which I can now state but little. Furthermore, these forma 
1008 
ived 
tions are remarkably similar in general character to the synchro! 
deposits of the continental littoral, as will now be shown. 
Along the continental margins of North, Central, and South Americ? 
there are thick formations of approximately synchronous age which have 
a remarkable and suggestive lithologic and structural resemblance u 
the Richmond beds of the Antilles, being composed like them of imr 
pure unwashed land derived material accompanied by plant remains 9? 
bituminous material, everywhere occurring in uniform wide extending 
alternations of sands and clays indicative of shallow marginal depositio? 
within the limits of tidal action, and marked by the absence of lime 
stones of organic, oceanic, or ofher than segregational secondary origi? 
Of this nature are the lower and by far the greater portion of the 
Zocene beds of the Southern Coastal Plain of the United States, 7 
the Great Northern Lignite Group of Hilgard, — which extends as n 
southward as the Tropic of. Cancer in Mexico, and the similar fori 
tions which characterize the closing days of the Cretaceous and beg" 
ning of the Tertiary throughout the great Rocky Mountain front. n 
lithologio resemblance of the older Tertiaries of the Central America! 
Isthmian, and Colombian coasts of South America to those of the AT 
tilles is equally striking. In Trinidad and Venezuela the Eocene E 
mation is also represented by a land-derived formation, the Napari? 
