Fe re ENS et Fe ae ee ye See ea 
Se en Te ea TE Ee a OTS EO NT EO eS EE an a, ee See Pe ee) ae ee Fe ny pe eee 
Fe Ee RN ee RE 
W. M. Fontaine—Mesozoie Strata of Virginia. 157 
careful study to fix the age, but from my preliminary examin- 
ation, I conclude that it is nearly of the age of the Upper Oolite 
of England, an age long ago assigned by Rogers to these beds. 
The general facies is much like that of the flora of Sutherland 
in Scotland, figured in part by Hugh Miller in his “ Testimony 
of the Rocks,” which he considered as being partly Liassic, but 
which Mr. Judd shows to be all Upper Oolite in age. R. C. Taylor 
found at another locality near Fredericksburg, but on the same 
horizon with mine, a few plants which he figured and described, 
in a communication published in the Trans. Geol. Soc. Penn., 
vol. i, 1885. These plants he considered to be Oolite in age. 
n the upper series at Fredericksburg I have found, in a 
state of preservation permitting determination, only a few twigs 
of Conifers with leaves. But this series, both here and to the 
northward, is remarkable for the great quantity of lignite and 
jet which it contains, produced from the trunks and limbs of 
coniferous trees. The most abundant tree seems to have had 
a wood very like that of the white pine (Pinus strobus). To 
judge from the amount of this lignite in the upper series of the 
belt, the country must have been covered with extensive 
forests of coniferous trees, at the time of the formation of 
the beds composing it. The trunks are sometimes piled so 
thickly over each other that they produce the appearance of 
a prostrate forest. Near Neabsco Station we find such a state 
of things. The trunks are here flattened and imbedded in a 
cies of ferns and stumps of Cycads of the genus Cycadoidea. 
None of these have been seen by me. hat the relation of 
[To be continued.] 
Am. Jour. S8o1.—Tuirp Serizs, Von. XVII, No. 98.—FEs., 1879. 
ll 
