260 OLDER MESOZOIC FLORAS OF UNITED STATES. 
Mr. Jules Marcou, as we have seen, had visited this region and made 
a small collection of fossil plants. Some of these he took with him 
on a visit to Europe and showed them to the eminent paleobotanist, 
Prof. Oswald Heer, of Zurich. In his Geology of North America’ he 
introduces a translation of Professor Heer’s report upon this collec- 
‘tion. It contains nothing additional to the forms described by Rogers 
and Bunbury. 
At the Philadelphia meeting of the American Institute of Mining” 
Engineers, in February, 1878, Mr. Oswald J. Heinrich read an elabo- 
rate paper on the Mesozoic Formation in Virginia, which was published 
in the Transactions.?. He gives numerous sections in the principal 
mines of the Richmond coal field, mentioning the occurrence of 
plants, and on page 264 he attempts an enumeration of the species, 
basing it on determinations made for him by Prof. C. E. Hall, of 
the University of Pennsylvania, to whom the material collected was 
referred. The list is short, and the names the old erroneous ones of 
Brongniart, Bunbury, and Rogers. 
Prof. William M. Fontaine commenced his important researches in 
this field early in the seventies and contributed a preliminary paper® 
in 1879. This paper is chiefly geological and covers a wide field, dis- 
cussing the relations of the older to the younger Mesozoic, but it is 
based largely on the evidence furnished by the flora, and that of the 
Richmond coal field receives special treatment (pp. 37-39). 
This paper was the natural forerunner of his Older Mesozoic Flora 
of Virginia,* with which we have already had much to do, and which is 
unquestionably the most important contribution that has yet been 
made to the flora of the American Trias. It forms one of the 
smaller monographs of the United States Geological Survey, contain- 
ing 144 pages of text and 54 plates. As stated by the author, ‘‘it is 
based upon the study of a number of plants obtained after several 
years of diligent search in the older Mesozoic strata of Virginia.” 
The number of species, or rather of distinct plants, that are here 
described and figured amounts to 45, which will be seen to be a large 
increase over those hitherto known. LEight of these species were 
already known from other localities under established names; 4 more 
of this class are referred to different genera or species, making 12 not 
confined to Virginia. Of the remaining 33, which are so confined, 9 
have close affinities with species already described. It thus appears 
that considerably over half of the entire number are peculiar to the 
locality and have no weight in determining its horizon. 
1Geology of North America, with Two Reports on the Prairies of Arkansas and Texas, the Rocky 
Mountains of New Mexico, and the Sierra Nevada of California, originally made for the United States 
Government; by Jules Marcou; Zurich, 1858; p. 16. 
2Vol. VI, pp. 227-274. p 
8 Notes on the Mesozoic of Virginia: Am. Jour. Sci., 3d series, Vol. XVII, January, 1879, pp. 25-55, 
4Mon. U.S. Geol. Survey, Vol. VI, Washington, 1883, 4°. 
