DESCRIPTIONS OF SPECIES. 5 



pinnae with long, linear-notched pinnules which seem to form the most 

 striking characteristic of the foreign fern. Among all my specimens I have 

 nothing which resembles those figured on PI. VIII, fig. 2, or PI. IX, figs. 

 1, 2, 4, of Eocene Ferns. 



Lesquereux's specimens were collected by Dr. Hayden on the divide 

 between the headwaters of Snake River and Yellowstone Lake. Those 

 now figured are from Bellingham Bay, Washington; Erie, Colorado, and 

 Point of Rocks, Wyoming. The strata exposed in the last two localities 

 are now generally conceded to be Cretaceous, although Lesquereux has 

 claimed that they are Tertiary, and the discussion which these diverse 

 views have excited has given special A^alue to all new paleontological mate- 

 rial from that region. If it should be agreed that all the ferns here asso- 

 ciated together represent but a single species, that is no proof that the rocks 

 which contain all of them are at one geological level. Nearly all the wide- 

 spread species of fossil plants and animals have also considerable vertical 

 range, and the American specimens are so much broader and stronger that 

 they constitute a distinct variety, such as may have lived at a little earlier 

 epoch than the European plants which are regarded as specifically identical 

 with them. The proofs of the Cretaceous age of the Lower Laramie of 

 Colorado and Wyoming, viz, numerous Dinosaurs and Cretaceous mollusks, 

 with the absence of animal or plant remains that are elsewhere found in 

 Tertiary rocks, may be regarded as decisive of this question. Hence we 

 can only say that if the leaf beds of Sezanne be regarded as Tertiary, it 

 does not at all follow that the Laramie group is so simply because it contains 

 a species closely allied to, or a distinct variety of, a fern found in these beds 

 abroad. According to Mr. Gardner, Anemia subcretacea occurs at Bourne- 

 mouth, but we know that the Bournemouth beds are somewhat later than 

 those of Gelinden and Sezanne, and that they are on the horizon of the Fort 

 Union beds of the upper Missouri country. 



Count Saporta does not approve Mr. Gardner's transfer of his Asplenium 

 subcretaceum to Anemia, and his reasons are quoted by the latter in the 

 memoir already referred to, page 46. It would seem, however, that this 

 question can not be decided without the fructification, and that has not yet 

 been found. This is somewhat remarkable, considering the fact that already 

 thousands of specimens of Anemia subcretacea have been collected. If it 

 were a species of Asplenium, it seems hardly possible that the fruit should 



