FLORA OF THE KOOTANIE FORMATION. 277 



wood, having a very hard and fine-grained sheath 1-2 cm. thick sur- 

 rounding the large, coarse-grained, reddish, sandy-appearing interior, 

 which is much decayed and hollowed out in the only specimen known. 

 PI. LXX represents the best preserved side of the specimen. 



FXiORA OF THK KOOTAIS^IE FORMATION. 



The name "Kootanie series" was first used l)y Dr. George M. Dawson 

 in some notes furnished by him to his father. Sir William Dawson, in 

 1885, based on field explorations made in 1884 in the Rocky Mountain 

 region of Alberta, north of the forty-ninth parallel, in the course of which 

 collections were made from various horizons, but then for the first time 

 from beds in the Lower Cretaceous, and it was to these beds that the 

 name was applied. The only fossils found in the beds were remains of 

 plants, of which a considerable collection was made. These plants were 

 determined by Sir William Dawson, and descriptions and figures were 

 embodied in a paper presented by him to the Royal Society of Canada 

 on May 27, 1885, in which were also contained the notes furnished by 

 Doctor Dawson." The principal localities for the plants were Martin 

 Brook, or Martin Creek; North Fork of Old Man River; near Canmore; 

 North Kootanie Pass; entrance to Kootanie Pass; Coal Creek; and 

 Crows Nest Pass. Twenty-two forms are described. Eight of these 

 were new and the other 14 were identified with Lower Cretaceous and 

 Jurassic species previously known, a few of them occurring also in Upper 

 Cretaceous beds. 



About the same time. Dr. J. S. Newberry made an exammation of 

 the Great Falls coal basin in Montana, but did not succeed in finding 

 any fossils by which its age could be determined. A little later, however, 

 Mr. R. S. Williams, a botanist living at Great Falls, discovered impres- 

 sions of plants in a railroad cutting 5 miles above the mouth of Sun River, 

 which he sent to Doctor Newberry, who determined them and found 

 among them one of the new species described by. Dawson in the paper 

 last mentioned, viz, the Zamites montana Dn., also the Sequoia Smittiana 

 Heer, a Lower Cretaceous species from Greenland (Kome beds), which 

 was also found in the Kootanie and figured by Dawson. 



a On the Mesozoic floras of the Rocky Mountain region of Canada, by Sir William Dawson : Trans. Roy. Soc. 

 Canada, Vol. Ill, Sect. IV, 1885, pp. 1-22, pi. i-iv. The Kootanie is named and described on p. 2 of this paper. 



