GEOLOGICAL SKETCH. ip 
many ; a result confirming and further illustrating the conclusions of Heer, 
Marcou, Bunbury, and others, who have regarded the Richmond coal series 
as Upper Trias. The Rheetic, formerly included in the Keuper, is known to 
form beds of passage between the Trias and the Lias, though with a still 
prevailing Triassic facies. 
We are not yet in possession of the material necessary for making an 
exact comparison between the rocks of the southern Triassic areas and those 
of New Jersey and Connecticut. No considerable collection of the fossil 
fishes of the Richmond and North Carolina basins has been made, though 
they are known to abound there; but the few fish remains from North 
Carolina and Virginia which have come under my observation show that 
there are marked differences between the faunas of the northern and south- 
ern Triassic basins. On the other hand, the plants thus far collected in 
New Jersey and Connecticut are few—since they are not common in any 
locality yet known—while plants are by far the most striking and abun- 
dant fossils in the Virginia and North Carolina basins. They have been 
eathered by many collectors, and have been now studied by Professor Fon- 
taine and described in the monograph referred to above. More fishes from 
the southern areas and more plants from the northern must therefore be 
collected before a satisfactory comparison can be made. So far as they 
throw light upon this subject, the facts already gathered indicate a general 
parallelism between the northern and southern areas; some differences, 
but many points of identity being discernible. For example, the Richmond 
coal basin has furnished to me one species of Catopterus (C. gracilis) which 
is common in New Jersey, but by far the most abundant fish of the Rich- 
mond basin is Dictyopyge macrura Egt., which has not yet been found in 
the northern basins. ‘Traces of two other genera and species unknown at 
the North have been obtained from Richmond. It is probable that the 
large fish of which a fragment is figured by Sir Philip Egerton,’ and called 
a Tetragonolepis, is an Ischypterus, iden tical with the large and broad spe- 
cies (I. ovatus) which occurs at Sunderland and Boonton. Whether the 
other species of fishes belonging to the genera Catopter us, Ischypterus, Dip- 
Jurus, ete., found in the northern basins, will be obtained at the South when 
1 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soe. London, vol. 3, 1547, pl. 9. 
