126 I. C. WHITE — HORIZON OF THE KANAWHA BLACK FLINT 



1. Some individual coal beds, limestones, and sandstones can be fol- 

 lowed and identified for hundreds of miles, in the Appalachian basin 

 at least, and hence the doctrine that no coal bed can be certainly iden- 

 tified by stratigraphic methods beyond the limits of a small, circum- 

 scribed area is both erroneous and mischievous, leading to confusion 

 and useless duplication in nomenclature instead of to order and sim- 

 plicity. 



2. When stratigraphy and paleobotany disagree, the latter must 

 yield, since the few fossil plants we know can be only a tithe of those 

 which must have existed, and hence we cannot reason with absolute 

 safety upon such incomplete data. 



3. Until we can know the Coal Measure flora more fully, and can 

 work out its geographic distribution with more accuracy than is now 

 possible, it must prove an uncertain and misleading guide to the corre- 

 lation of distinct coal seams and horizons when widely separated, unless 

 checked and controlled by stratigraphy. In other words, owing to the 

 imperfection of our knowledge, paleobotany should be used only as an 

 aid in supplementing the work of stratigraphy when we come to the 

 detailed identification of individual coal seams or even groups of these 

 beds. 



