284 REVIEWS 
Fossil Flora of the Lower Coal Measures of Missouri. By Davip 
Wuite. U. S. Geological Survey, Monograph XXXVII, 
468 pp., 1900. 
The coal floras are always of great interest. The present contribu- 
tion is the most important that the central-West has seen since the 
appearance of Lesquereux’s classic work of a quarter of a century ago. 
The title of the volume does not, however, express the real scope of 
the work. Most of the forms come from a single locality, near 
Clinton, in Henry county, Missouri, and from a single horizon— the 
Jordan coal. ‘The latter is the lowest workable coal seam in the dis- 
trict and is only about roo feet from the base of the Coal Measures. - 
While the greater part of the monograph is taken up with the 
minute descriptions of species, and discussions of the biological rela- 
tionships of these, the chief interest to the stratigraphical geologist is 
centered in the data furnished for broad correlations. 
Regarding the probable stage of the lower coals of Clinton in east- 
ern sections, Mr. White says: “If we take Henry county, from which 
most of our evidence, both stratigraphic and paleontologic is drawn, 
as the stratigraphic type of the base of the Coal Measures of the state, 
and assume that the conditions are constant along the margin of the 
coal field in other counties, the evidence of the fossil plants, so far as 
they are now obtainable, appears to indicate the deposition of the low- 
est coals in the state. at a time subsequent to the formation of the 
lower coals of the Lower Coal Measures of the eastern regions, includ- 
ing the Morris coal of Illinois, the Brookville and probably the 
Clarion coal of Ohio and Pennsylvania, yet perhaps earlier than the 
formation of the Darlington or upper Kittanning coals of the two 
states last named. 
“The study of the distribution of the Henry county flora in this 
field shows its closest relations in coals D and E, locally known as the 
‘Marcy’ and the ‘Big’ or Pittston coals. But in view of the fact 
that the E coal of the Pittston and Wilkesbarre regions seems to carry 
many types of a more modern cast, it is not likely that the Missouri 
stage is so high in the series as that coal. In the plants of the D coal, 
not only are a large part of the species identical with those from Mis- 
souri, but the flora as a whole is of a similar type. Compared, how- 
ever, with the somewhat equivocal combined flora reported from the 
C coal, the material from the Mississippi valley appears on the whole 
fully as recent, while lacking many of the older types found at several 
