FLORA OF THE TRINITY FORMATION. 335 



fucoidal stems seem to be different from the larger and shorter branching 

 objects which I was at the time inchned to refer to some coniferous plant. 



While on the subject of this problematical form, the vegetable nature 

 of which is, to say the least, still very doubtful, it may be well to review 

 its history. Mr. Hill was under the impression that he was the first to 

 discover it in the Cretaceous of Texas, and his first published mention of 

 it was that above quoted in his Check List in 1889. This occurs in his 

 geological introduction, and it is not included among the fossils of the 

 Annotated Check List, which is confined to recognized animal forms that 

 admit of systematic classification. In his paper, also above cited, on 

 the Occurrence of Goniolina in the Comanche Series (1890), he gives its 

 range as beginning "in the Colorado River section at the first (lowest) 

 fossiliferous horizon in the basal Fredericksburg bed above the Trinity 

 sands, and ranging upward through 450 feet of sediments into the base 

 of the Comanche Peak chalk." He had sent specimens to "various 

 paleontological friends in the scientific centers of the East, all of whom 

 pronounced them an undetermined species of the genus Goniolina, of 

 D'Orbigny." 



He again mentions it in his Comanche series of the Texas-Arkansas 

 region (1891), as "the large, strawberry-shaped Goniolina or Parkeria" 

 (p. 508). 



In a paper read before the Biological Society of Washington on 

 January 28, 1893," Mr. Hill discusses this form in the light of his latest 

 observations, and especially of those made in the Glen Rose beds on the 

 occasion of our visit above described, and on p. 39 he describes it, 

 classing it under "Plantse" and calling it an "undetermined species 

 ('Goniolina'? of author's previous writings)." In the discussion, how- 

 ever, he says: 



A careful study in situ of the surface of a stratum in wliich these seanas were 

 well exposed showed that they branched very much like coniferous plants. At the 

 termination of each ramification was found one of the small spherical casts, as if 

 the limb of a plant laden with cones had been buried in the mud and its cast preserved. 

 Recently, however, the fruit structure has been determined in the specimens them- 

 selves as figured on plate i [figs. 1-1 d]. 



The species should be named for Prof. Lester F. Ward, who has done so much 

 for American paleobotany and has ever encouraged the writer in his studies. 



a Paleontology of the Cretaceous formations of Texas. The invertebrate paleontology of the Trinity 

 division, by Robert T. Hill: Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. VIII, 1893, pp. 9-40, pi. i-viii. 



