264 OLDER MESOZOIC FLORAS OF UNITED STATES. 
As confirming, so far as it goes, the views of Stur regarding the 
somewhat lower position of the Richmond coal field and that of North 
Carolina, may be fitly noted the discovery in the Lower Trias of the 
Vosges (*‘Grés bigarré de Saint-Germain prés Luxeuil”), by M. Des- 
pierres, of a specimen identified by Zeiller’ with Professor Fontaine’s 
Acrostichites rhombifolius rarinervis. From this and other indica- 
tions Zeiller is inclined to regard the American deposits as Triassic 
rather than Rhetic. This opinion, after noting the views of Professor 
Heer contained in the letter to Mr. Marcou, already mentioned, he 
expresses in the following words: 
Je serais, en résumé, trés disposé 4 accepter l’assimilation de Heer de préférence 
a celle de M. Fontaine, c’est 4 dire que je placerais les couches en question dans le 
trias supérieur plutét que dans le rhétien. 
This whole subject was. discussed quite at length by Mr. Jules 
Marcou in 1890,” and he takes occasion to go over the history of his 
own investigations along with those of others. Very little is added 
to our knowledge of the subject, but a letter from Zeiller, which he 
inserts on page 172, contains his determinations of Mr. Marcou’s col- 
lection, sent in 1849 to the Jardin des Plantes, and which had lain there 
during this long period without attention. It contained eight or ten 
species, none of which were new. 
Some specimens of fossil wood were collected by Mr. W J McGee, 
near Taylorsville on the South Anna River in Hanover County, who 
supposed them to belong to the Potomac formation, and they were 
included in Dr. Knowlton’s paper on the Fossil Wood and Lignite of 
the Potomac Formation.’* 
As all the other specimens from that formation had proved to be of 
Sequoian type and been referred to the genus Cupressinoxylon, there 
was a suspicion that these might represent an older formation. I 
therefore decided to visit the locality at the first opportunity, which 
presented itself on the occasion of the return of our expedition, pres- 
ently to be recounted, over the Triassic beds of Virginia in 1890. On 
June 18 of that year, accompanied by Professor Fontaine and Mr. 
Charles S. Prosser, I examined the bed on the South Anna River and 
made further collections of the wood. The Trias appeared at several 
points in that vicinity, sometimes in the form of red shales, and the 
wood in question occurred in a superficial deposit, probably Lafayette, 
immediately overlying the Trias. It could not have come.from the 
Potomac farther to the east, and had undoubtedly weathered out of 
the Trias. ; 
During the month of June, 1890, an excursion was made by Pro- 
1Sur la présence dans le grés bigarré des Vosges de 1’Acrostichides rhombifolius Fontaine, par 
R. Zeiller: Bull. Soc. géol. de France, 3d series, Vol. XVI, 1888, pp. 698-699. 
2The Triassic flora of Richmond, Virginia: Am. Geologist, Vol. V, March, 1890, pp. 160-174. 
’ Bull. U. 8. Geol. Survey No. 56, 1889, p. 50, pl. vii, figs. 2-5. 
