538 A. C. VEATCH 
in Weber Valley.”* He strongly emphasizes in this report the impor- 
tance of the Laramie Plains localities, particularly Carbon, in the 
determination of the question of the age of these beds. He certainly 
singles out Carbon as the one locality at which the age can be fixed, 
regarding the flora as there developed as the important connecting 
link between the coal-bearing beds of Wyoming and those of the 
Missouri River region. He says: 
The most important coal-mines are located at Carbon. No shells have ever 
been observed in connection with the coals, but thousands of impressions of decidu- 
ous leaves are found. It is important to fix the age of the coal-beds in any one 
locality. So far as we can determine, the coal-beds of the Laramie Plains are of 
Eocene age, although the plants are more closely allied to those of the Miocene 
period in the Old World.? 
So far as the Evanston coal-mines are concerned . . . . I discovered a magnifi- 
cent series of fossil leaves, among which Dr. Newberry informed me he had detected 
species identical with those occurring in connection with the coal-beds of the Lara- 
mie Plains and on the upper Missouri.3 
In 1872 Hayden directed Lesquereux to make explorations in 
Colorado and Wyoming with a special “‘ view to positively ascertaining 
the age of the Lignitic formations, either from data obtainable in 
collecting or examining fossil vegetable remains or from any geo- 
logical observations which I [he] should be able to make.’’* In this 
examination he visited Rock Creek and Carbon. At Rock Creek 
he failed to find the locality from which Hayden obtained his leaves, 
finding only outcrops yielding characteristic upper Cretaceous marine 
forms.5 He thus anticipated, as Hayden had before, and perhaps 
to a more complete degree, anticipated by the finding of Fox Hills 
sandstones on Rock Creek,°® the conclusions reached many years 
later by Drs. Stanton and Knowlton’ at this locality. At Carbon he 
included with the Lignitic, because of the presence of the fucoid Hel- 
emynites, which he then supposed to be characteristic of the Lignitic, 
«U.S. Geological Survey Report, Joc. cit., p. 167. 
2 ibid pa TOAN en 3 Ibid., p. 167. 
4 Sixth Annual Report, U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories for 1872, 1873, 
P- 317. 
§ Ibid., p. 330. 
6 Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. VIII (1896), pp. 137-43. 
7 [Fourth Annual] Preliminary Report, U.S. Geological Survey of Wyoming (1871), 
Pp. 79- 
