170 J. J. STEVENSON CARBONIFEROUS OF APPALACHIAN BASIN 



mon with that of the lower beds in Tennessee and southward. Separate 

 lists of forms collected at many localities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ken- 

 tucky, Tennessee, and Alabama afford means for a closer comparison, 

 which is made in a chapter on Stratigraphical Distribution. This work 

 marks a great advance in application of plant remains in problems of 

 correlation and an equal advance in methods of studying the remains- 

 themselves. 



In the same year Professors Fontaine and Wlaite* published figures 

 and descriptions of species obtained from the roof and partings of the 

 Waynesburg coal bed, together with some from other horizons in the 

 Monongahela and higher formations. Here one finds a serious attempt 

 to utilize the testimony of plant remains in broad correlation of horizons. 

 The effort in the introductory chapter to compare floras characterizing 

 the several formations exposes the neglect of which students had been 

 guilty throughout the Appalachian field, for the collections were so scanty 

 that the authors had to be content with, for the most part, only general 

 statements. Comparisons were made between plants collected from- the 

 upper part of the Kockcastle on New river of West Virginia, those listed 

 by Lesquereux from Alabama, and the forms obtained in Ohio by ISTew- 

 berry and Andrews, and the important conclusion was drawn that the . 

 Pottsville fiora has a genuine facies, distinguishing it from those of 

 formations below as well as from tliat of the Allegheny above. Material 

 for comparison was almost wholly wanting from the Allegheny, Cone- 

 maugh, and Monongahela formations, being confined for each U> nue or 

 two localities. The forms described in this volume were obtained chiefly 

 from the roof shales of the Waynesburg coal bed at Cassville, in West 

 Virginia, 4 or 5 miles south from the Pennsylvania line; but small 

 collections had been made from that horizon elsewhere in West Virginia 

 and from Greene county of Pennsylvania. The peculiar feature noted 

 at Cassville is that the plants are "distributed in the most singular man- 

 ner, they being grouped in colonies, which are confined within very 

 narrow limits; so that the plants which abound at one opening for coal 

 will be entirely wanting in another only a few hundred yards distant, 

 where we find instead of them a collection of species so different that it 

 might well characterize a different horizon." 



In all, 107 species and varieties are given as obtained from the Cass- 

 ville shale and higher horizon. Of these, 56 are peculiar to the Cass- 

 ville shale, 15 are common to the Cassville shale and that overlying the 

 coal bed in Doddridge county, taken by the writer to be the Uniontown, 



* W. M. Fontaine and I. C. White : The Permian or Upper Carboniferous flora of 

 West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. 



