Art. XIV.— Paleonfolog-ical Papers IVo. 1 1 : Remarks 

 upon Certain Carboniferous Fossils from Colorado, 

 Arizona, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming-, and Certain 

 Cretaceous Corals from Colorado, tog^ether ivith 

 Descriptions of New Forms. 



By C. A. White, M. D. 



On former occasions* I have pointed out the fact that, so far as it had 

 been investigated, the great series of strata, referable to the Carbonifer- 

 ous age, which is extensively developed in many portions of the Western 

 Territories, is not susceptible of satisfactory separation into three great 

 divisions or groups co-ordmate with the Subcarboniferous, Coal-measure, 

 and Permian groups of other parts of the world. The facts accumulated 

 up to the present time appear to fully support this view, even as regards 

 the relation of the Carboniferous series of the Western Territories with 

 that of the Mississippi Yalley ; but there appears to be no reason to doubt 

 that the whole of Carboniferous time is represented by both series. At 

 least invertebrate types, which are respectively characteristic of the two 

 lower groups of the series in the Mississippi Yalley, are found in different 

 parts of the series in the Western Territories. It is well known that 

 at several restricted and somewhat widely separated localities in those 

 Territories, and in the neighboring State of I^evada, collections of in- 

 vertebrate fossils have been made, the species of which not only have 

 close affinities with certain Subcarboniferous fossils of the interior States, 

 but a considerable proportion of them have been found to be specifically 

 identical with certain well known Subcarboniferous forms which are 

 found in the Mississippi Valley and further eastward. But still the fact 

 remains that the existence of the Subcarboniferous as a distinct and con- 

 tinuous group of strata, and separable as such from the succeeding i^or- 

 tions of the great Carboniferous series, as it is developed in the Western 

 Territories, has not yet been fully recognized. 



As a rule, the lower strata of the Carboniferous seties of all that great 

 Western region contain invertebrate forms, if any, which are no more 

 suggestive of their Subcarboniferous age than those are which occur at 

 or near the top of the series. It is true, however, that in the case of the 



*See Expl. and Sur. West oflOOth Meridiau (Wheeler), vol. iv, part 1, p. 1(3; Geol- 

 ogy of tlie Uinta Mountains (Powell),-p. 80; and Ann. Kep. U. S. Geol. Sur. Terr, for 

 1876 (Hayden), p. 24. 



209 



