No. 8. 



On some Specimens of Permian Fossil Plants from Cola 



rado. By Leo Lesquekeux. 



Last February, Eev, Arthur Lakes, of Golden, wrote me that he had 

 found in South Park, near Fairplay, Colorado, a bed of shale with 

 beautiful insect remains mixed with a profusion of vegetable fraf^tnents 

 resembling the scales and seeds of Conifers, and with them some well- 

 defined forms, among others a small stem of Lepidodendron^ showino- 

 distinctly the scars and various small branches of Conifers, or Zaniia? or 

 LycopodiacGDO. "Those remains," he said, "are in the Eed-bods, on an 

 horizon appearing to us when examining the locality as Lower Triassic, 

 or Permian, or Carboniferous. A thin scam of coal was also discovered 

 adjacent to the beds, and one tiny shell." 



Some time later Mr. Lakes sent me a box of specimens from the local- 

 ity mentioned above, asking me to determine them if possible, to report 

 to him what evidence on the age of the formation could be derived from 

 these vegetable remauis, and to send the specimens to the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. 



Though i\\Q specimens are very small, covered with mixed minute 

 fragments of leaves, scales, flowers, and seeds of Conifers, leaflets of Ferns, 

 etc., I was able to recognize, in all those which could be determined, the 

 characters of a Permian vegetation, and I reported to Mr. Lakes ac- 

 cordingly. 



Being then about to publish the list of the determined species, with 



some remarks upon them. Prof. Samuel Scudder, to whom the insects had 



been sent, advised me that, from the characters of the animal remains, 



his conclusions on the age of the formation did not fully agree with those 



derived from the plants. As he was going to examine the locality 



himself, ho wrote me that ho might perhaps fmd some more valuable 



specimens, and that ho would communicate them to mo when returned 

 homo. 



These specimens, kindly communicated by Prof, Scudder, were re- 

 ceived two weeks ago. Though the vegetable remains preserved upon 

 them are quite as broken, mixed, and indistinct as those of Mr. Lakes, I 

 found a few of them whose determination added some new evidence to 

 that wln'ch had been procured already. 



VOL. VII. —NO. 8. 



