10 TRIASSIC FISHES AND PLANTS. 
but in his Geology of North America, 1858, he claims that the Richmond 
coal basin is of the age of the Keuper or Upper Trias, although he accepts 
the view of Professor Emmons, that the coal series of Deep and Dan 
Rivers, North Carolina, is at base Permian. On page 16 of the Geology of 
North America, Prof. J. Marcou publishes a letter of Prof. Oswald Heer, of 
Zurich, written July 25, 1857, in which he reviews the fossil flora of the 
Richmond and North Carolina coal basins, and regards it as contempo- 
raneous with that of the Keuper. 
In October, 1857, Sir Charles Lyell, writing to Professor Marcou (loe. 
cit.) quotes a note from Mr. Bunbury upon this subject, in which, referring to 
his paper on the Richmond plants' where he had expressed the opinion that 
the formation containing them might belong to the Jurassic or to the Tri- 
assic period, and that it might, with almost equal plausibility, be referred to 
either, he says: ‘‘At the time I wrote this the Basle and Baireuth beds were 
supposed to be Lias.” Professor Marcou comments on this as follows: “As 
the Basle and Baireuth beds are now recognized by every geologist as 
belonging to the Keuper, it will appear that Bunbury never intended to 
put the Virginia coal field in the true Jurassic of England; so that we all 
agree to regard the Red Sandstone of Virginia and North Carolina as 
Keuper.” 
In 1883 Prof. W. M. Fontaine published the results of a careful study 
‘made by himself of the flora of the coal series of Virginia in a monograph 
issued by the U.S. Geological Survey, with the title “Contributions to the 
Knowledge of the Older Mesozoic Flora of Virginia.” In this monograph 
(pp. 122, 123) he enumerates thirty-nine weil-defined species of plants, of 
which 23 per cent. are peculiar to North Carolina, 41 per cent. are found in 
Virginia, 20 per cent. are allied to or identical with Jurassic forms while 
the number of species identical with or allied to Rheetic plants amounts to 
38 per cent.; or, as he says:” 
Assuming with Feistmantel that the Rajmahal group of India is of Liassic age, 
we have two species identical with and six nearly allied to Jurassic plants, while 
seven species are identical with and eight closely allied to Rheetic plants. 
This shows that the plant-bearing strata of Virginia and North Caro- 
lina may be safely considered equivalent in age to the Rheetic beds of Ger- 
'Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, vol. 3, 1847, p. 288. 2 Op. ecit., p. 123, 
ioe FP 
