Lyman ] " [Ja°- 5- 



Avere taken and sent to Prof. L. Lesquereux, of Columbus, Ohio. He 

 returns the following answer : 



" 'The photographs are sufficient, if not for specific determination, at 

 least for positive reference of the specimens to Lepidodendron. Even I 

 should say that the specimens represent L. weltheimianum Presl as dis- 

 tinctly as a specific representation can be made upon a decorticated trunk 

 of Lepidodendron. L. weltheimianum is a leading species of the old red 

 sandstone found here, as in Europe, from the subcarboniferous measures 

 down to the Devonian, while until now we do not have any remains of 

 Lepidodendron of any kind from the upper coal measures (Permo-car- 

 bouiferous), or from higher up than the Pittsburg coal. 



" ' L. weltheimianum is recorded only once from the true coal measures ; 

 this by Eichwald, from the Carboniferous sandstone of Russia. But 

 European authors, among others Goeppert, doubt the identity of the Kus- 

 sian species with L. weltheimianum, which is moreover extremely variable, 

 and has been described already under about thirty different names.' 



" Another fragment [Prof. Cook adds] has since been obtained from 

 the same quarries by Dr. Skinner, of Belleville, and is now in our posses- 

 sion. It is seven inches long, five and one-half inches wide, and one and 

 one-halt inches thick, and is as plainly marked as the first. Other and 

 smaller specimens somewhat like the above have also been found in the 

 quarries in Newark. If these fossils are sufficient to determine the geo- 

 logical age of these beds, they put it in the upper Carboniferous, at least, 

 which is lower than has heretofore been claimed for it. A larger and 

 more complete collection of such fossils must be made if possible. 



"Vegetable impressions are found in large numbers at the quarries of 

 Mr. Smith Clark, of Millord, but most of them are fragmentary and in- 

 distinct. Those w'hich can be seen plainly enough for identification resem- 

 ble the Equisetum and some coniferous plants. They are evidently much 

 newer than the fossils at Newark and Belleville." 



It is not to be wondered at tliat the very sagacious Prof. Cook should 

 have perceived this great difterence in age on even so cursory an exam- 

 ination ; for the Newark brownstone is at least some nine thousand feet 

 lower geologically than the Milford beds, a part of the Perkasie shales of 

 Pennsylvania. Few species indicating the geological age have been 

 reported from the Milford beds ; but from the horizon of the Gwynedd 

 and Pli03nixville dark shales, far below those of Milford, and quite above 

 the Newark beds, appear to have come most of the fossils in Pennsyl- 

 vania, Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere, that have been thought 

 to indicate the Rliailic age of all the older Mesozoic rocks of those States. 



So fixed has become the impression of the Mesozoic age of all the beds 

 that have hitherto commonly been grouped together under the name of the 

 American New Red, and many other names, that it may even possibly 

 have caused some bias in tlie minds of paleontologists in their determina- 

 tion of more or less doubtful fossils ; though Lesquereux seems not to have 

 been fettered by such a prejudice to the extent of blindness to otherwise 



