10 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



These species show that the climate resembles that of Virginia. Conifera 

 are represented by Glyptostrobus Gracillisstmus, resembling the Norway Fine. I 

 found their cones, but they are rare. 



Liquidamhra Integrifolia with its lobes cut down nearly to the middle, is quite 

 a common cretaceous plant ; Willows, Salix ; Black Walnut, /uglans ; Oak, Quer- 

 cus ; Maple, Acer; Bass-wood, Platanus ; Magnolia, Rhamnus ; Box-elder, Negun- 

 doides and Plum, Frunus, are common in the Dakota flora. Another tree with 

 fern-hke leaves, Todea Saporteana, is found. One species with parallel veins, 

 Fhragmites, is the only species I discovered in the cretaceous with veins arranged 

 in this way, proving that the climate did not resemble that of the tropics, where 

 the Palm with parallel veins and others like it, are in the majority. 



One very peculiar species, the Eremophyllum Fi?nbriatum, has leaves that 

 are dental from their lower margin, with equal short teeth, appendaged with 

 obtuse auricles, and separated by half-round sinuses. 



Searching along the mud flats, we find numerous leaves have fallen in and 

 are partly covered. Lifting one up carefully, we find beneath, an exact cast of 

 the leaf, and thus have the impressions, we find now in the sandstone of the 

 Dakota, been made. Often the soft sand was by pressure packed into solid rock; 

 the impressions were indelibly stamped. 



The noted Palseo-Botanist, Prof. Leo Lesquereux, has been able through 

 these impressions, to study the whole Dakota flora and identify the species as 

 readily as if the trees were before him. His interesting work, "The Cretaceous 

 Flora," has been published by the Government in Vol. VI, of the Geological 

 Survey under Prof. F, V Hayden. It is a magnificent work, beautifuUy illus- 

 trated with thirty lithographic plates. In a later work called "The Review of 

 the Cretaceous Flora," he has described and figured twenty-five new species 

 discovered by myself, and later, during my expedition for Prof. Agassiz, I dis- 

 covered twenty new species, and 800 specimens beautifully preserved, that have 

 been described by Prof. Lesquereux. About 200 species of forest trees have 

 been discovered in the sandstone of the Dakota Group, and described by the 

 Professor and Doctor Newberry. 



This Dakota Flora is a wonderful disproof of the theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion. Here we find at the base of the cretaceous, millions upon miUions of years 

 old, a flora as perfect as any of the present day. There has been no improve- 

 ment during aU these ages. Some of these species are called new, more on 

 account of the position in which they are found, than from any dissimilarity 

 between them and those of recent species. 



What has Nature been doing in the vegetable kingdom during these count- 

 less centuries? Is the line of development confined only to animals? And more 

 wonderful still, these perfect plants appear foi- the first time in the earth's history. 

 Like the hero of old that came into the world full-grown and ready armed, so 

 the grand flora of the Dakota appeared with no intermediate species between 

 it and the coal plants of the carboniferous. Let the scientists of the Darwinian 



