WARD.] THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY AREA. 227 
of facts relating to the fossil flora of the northern extension of the 
American Trias. 
My own investigations in this area began in the year 1890. 
During the month of August of that year Professor Fontaine and 
myself visited the beds in the vicinity of New Haven and most of the 
localities above mentioned in Connecticut and Massachusetts, especially 
those in the Connecticut Valley as far as Turners Falls and Gill, Massa- 
chusetts. Our object was, first, to see the collections at Yale Uni- 
versity, at the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and 
at Amherst and Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and to examine the older 
material that had been collected as above stated and all the fossil plants 
from the Trias deposited in these collections; secondly, to examine, 
so far as possible, the beds themselves from which fossil plants have 
been taken, and to note their mode of occurrence in the rocks. 
Of recent collectors in this section by far the most successful has 
been Mr. 8. Ward Loper, of Middletown. Mr. Loper was in the field 
at the time of our visit, and we met him at Tariffville, Connecticut, at 
which place he had discovered a plant-bearing locality. There being 
no true coal mines in the Connecticut Valley Trias, the mode of occur- 
rence of the fossil plants is, of course, somewhat different from that in. 
Virginia. It is equally true here, as in Virginia, that fossil plants are 
not found in the red sandstone, but are confined to the dark shales, 
and those in the Connecticut Valley occur for the most part in close 
connection with the trap ridges of that region. They are usually 
found at the margin of the shales near their contact with the trap. 
The locality at Tariffville was in close contact with one of the secondary 
trap ridges located on the eastern side of the main ridge, which, 
in the general trend of these ridges, places it higher in the Trias, 
_ geologically speaking, or, as Professor Davis expresses it, “* posterior.” 
From what Mr. Loper told us, and from numerous observations upon 
localities from which fossil plants have been previously reported, it 
would seem that they usually occur in this position. A fairly good 
specimen of Ctenophyllum Braunianum angustum was found during 
our visit to this locality, and Mr. Loper had already sent considerable 
material of this character to Professor Davis, which subsequently 
found its way into the general collection at Washington. ; 
Besides examining the Portland quarries and those of Turners Falls 
and Gill, Massachusetts, where no vegetable remains other than those 
presently to be named occur, we visited several places in Connecticut 
where Mr. Loper had obtained fossil plants, especially at Westfield 
and Highlands. In the Portland-quarries there occur large logs clearly 
representing Triassic trees embedded in the red sandstone and now 
thoroughly silicified; but besides these and the fine specimens of 
Dendrophycus which occur ‘there, nothing of a vegetable nature 
seems to have been found. At Turners Falls careful investigation was 
