396 Scientific Intelligence. 
2. Report on the Fossil Plants of the Auriferous Gravel 
Deposits of the Sierra Nevada; by L. Lesquerrvx. Memoirs 
of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. 
Vol. vi, No, 2. 58 pp. 4to, with ten double plates. — Professor Les- 
quereux here describes fifty species, and gives figures of the leaves 
on which they are based. He concludes: 
(1.) The species are related by some identical or closely allied 
forms to the Miocene, and still more intimately by others to the 
present flora of the North American continent. 
(2.) The North American facies is traced by some species to the 
Miocene, the Eocene, even the Cretaceous of the Western Territo- 
vies. Hence it is not possible to persist in considering the essen- 
tial types of the present North American flora as derived by 
migration from Europe or from Asia, either during the prevalence 
the Miocene or after it. This flora is connatural and autoch- 
quent to the Glacial period. is remarkable fact, so clearly dem- 
onstrated by nature, may serve as an exemplification of the causes 
os the disconnection of some of the other groups of our geological 
oras. 
_3. Memorandum of a fossil wood from the Keokuk formation 
Keokuk, Iowa ; by Samuxt J. Watuace, of that place.—A por- 
i kuk 
tion, Subcarboniferous, at Keokuk, Iowa, March 6th, 1878. age 
a section nearly three feet long; one end disappearing in 
external or bark markings, but rather those of woody fiber, possi- 
from the best quarry layers of the Keokuk Formation, five feet 
i d,” and from the center of a solid 18-inch 
> layer, on a horizon of numerous shells, fish teeth, etc. 
Is not this among the first distinct land plants from this forma- 
tors. 
tion ?—From a letter to the Edi 
_4, Atlas accompanying the Report of the Geological Explora- 
tion of the Fortieth Parallel ; by ga ont Kiva, U.S. Geologist 
