Plant-Beds of Western America. 401 
From the great lignite basin of the Upper Missouri, a large 
number of fossil plants have been brought to me by Prof. Hay- 
den, the Sully expedition and others. Many of these have 
been already described, and the flora which they represent I 
ve pronounced Miocene.* In the review to which I have 
alluded, Mr. Lesquereux refers all the plants from the Upper 
Missouri lignite-beds to the Lower Eocene. is conclusion I 
am unable to accept, from the fact that the general facies of 
the Missouri lignite-flora is altogether unlike that of the Euro- 
pean Kocene, and it is identified with the Miocene flora of 
Arctic America, Iceland, the Hebrides and Central Europe, 
by most of its genera and by a considerable number of well- 
marked identical species. It also contains some species which 
are living at the present day. Among these latter ma 
mentioned our deciduous cypress (Zaxodium distichum) and the 
Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis). This fern also occurs in 
Greenland, and is that described by Edward Forbes, from the 
Paat:beds of the Island of Mull, under the name of /%licites 
debridicus, Among the plants common to the Upper Missouri 
lignite-beds and other well known Miocene deposits, are Corylus 
Me Quarrii Forbes, Glyptostrobus Huropeus Ung., Sequoia Nor- 
denskioldi Heer, Carya Antiquorum Newb., (=/uglans nigella 
Lesq 
that they are Cretaceous is overwhelming. Some of the species 
found in the ey were at first supposed by Prof. Heer and 
* “Our Later Extinct Floras”—Annals Lye. Nat. Hist., N. Y., vol. ix, 1868. 
