18 Canadian Record of Science. 
_the Geological Survey of the United States, Lester F. 
Ward’s recent monographs on the flora of the Laramie 
group, and Sir William Dawson has shown me a proof of 
his paper on the same subject in the forthcoming transac- 
tions of the Royal Society of Canada. Whilst Ward still 
remains somewhat credulous about the age of the Laramie 
rocks, Sir William confidently refers them to the Lower 
Eocene, and concludes also that the Greenland flora usually 
referred to the Miocene is of later Cretaceous and early 
Eocene age, though he suggests the question whether this 
early flora of Greenland, and the floras of the Mackenzie 
River and North Western States—localities so far apart— 
may not have been successive within a long epoch in which 
climatic ehanges were gradually progressing. Ward’s tables 
indicating the distribution of the Laramie flora not only 
geographically, but also through geologic time, are interest- 
ing to the student of distribution of existing plant life. 
They show—if the identification be correct—that four, and 
it may be five, of our living species, viz.: Viburnum pubes- 
cens, Pursh, Corylus rostrata, Ait, C. Americana, Watt, 
Onoclea sensibilis, L., and probably Ginkgo biloba, L., now of 
Japan and China, date their origin as far back as at least 
Eocene times, whilst many of the most familiar genera 
among the trees and shrubs of the present day were equally 
well, and in some cases more largely represented in this 
past period, though appearing for the first time then or in 
the middle Cretaceous. The tables also bring to light 
another circumstance of great interest in connection with 
the discussion, in an earlier part of this paper, on the iden- 
tity, at the present day, between so many plants in Europe 
and America. Eleven species—all now extinct—were com- 
mon to the Eocene of Europe and the Laramie of the United 
States, whilst two others—also extinct—were common to 
the European Eocene and to the Greenland beds, considered 
by Sir William Dawson as later Cretaceous and early Hocene. 
There is thus some evidence that in the later Cretaceous and 
Eocene times, not only was the climate in sub-arctic Ame- 
rica sufficiently mild to admit there of genera which are, 
now at least, of a middle or possibly even southern tem- 
