174 J. J. STEVENSON — CARBONIFEROUS OF APPALACHIAN BASIN 



the Quinnimont coal bed, about 800 feet from the bottom, yielded 40 

 forms, which were compared with those collected at localities in Ohio, 

 Tennessee, and Alabama. One form is common to the Pocahontas, 10 

 are in Alabama, and one is allied to a form described by Newberry from 

 Ohio. About one-third of the species are of such vertical range as to 

 be valueless for correlation, but nearly one-half of the forms or their 

 varieties are confined definitively to the small middle part of the section, 

 in which one finds the Horsepen coal beds farther south in Virginia. The 

 eighth horizon, about 1,175 feet from the bottom, is that of the Sewell 

 coal bed. At all localities the forms collected resemble closely those 

 obtained from the Sewanee, Eockwood, and Tracy mines of Tennessee so 

 closely that the author regarded the horizon as one throughout — a con- 

 clusion reached ten years afterward by Stevenson on purely stratigraphic 

 grounds and withoiit any reference whatever to Mr White's researches. 

 The eleventh horizon, 1,500 feet from the bottom, is in the Nuttall 

 sandstone, where 10 forms were obtained — a flora whose preponderating 

 elements are characteristic of the Sharon coal bed in Ohio. 



Mr White's correlations were very important. He found that the 

 Sharon flora was confined to the highest portion of the section, and was 

 led to assert that the great mass of sediment in the New Eiver region 

 and southward was older than the Sharon sandstone of Pennsylvania and 

 Ohio, thus confirming the observation made 20 years before by Professor 

 Andrews and overlooked by all students, because made incidentally and 

 buried in a paper referring to other matters. But Mr White was able 

 to extend the generalization to the Anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. 

 The forms from the bottom of the thick sections of Pottsville have much 

 in common with the Culm or Lower Carboniferous series of the Old 

 World, while those from the middle present the general facies of the 

 Ostrau-Waldenburg flora of Moravian Silesia. 



These conclusions were wholly at variance with those reached by 

 stratigraphors who had studied the Coal Measures of Pennsylvania and 

 West Virginia. Six years later Mr White published another paper, also 

 preliminary, in which the floras of various horizons in the Allegheny 

 formation of Pennsylvania were compared with those of the Kanawha 

 formation of West Virginia. These had been regarded by most of the 

 stratigraphers as equivalent, though, as stated on a preceding page, the 

 tracing was incomplete, being interrupted by a space of about 60 miles 

 in northern West Virginia — a space where, as already shown, notable 

 changes take place in both Allegheny and Beaver and in which the Rock- 

 castle has its northern boundary. 



