WARD,] THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY AREA. 225 
4 
At the close of the paper Dr. Silliman mentions the fact that ‘ large 
stems of reedlike plants are found in the beds which furnish the fish, 
at Middlefield, in the same State.” 
In the same volume! Dr. Hitchcock noted the occurrence in bowl- 
ders of porphyritic trap at Amherst of “‘a vegetable stem from 1 to 3 
inches in diameter, scarcely flattened.” 
Several years later (1855), in an article contributed to the American 
Journal of Science,” Dr. E. Hitchcock, jr., describes another fern, which 
he calls Clathropteris rectiusculus, found in the sandstone of Mount 
Tom, in Easthampton, Massachusetts. From the figures on page 24 
Professor Fontaine, in his Older Mesozoic Flora,’ identifies this with 
Clathropteris platyphylla (Gopp.) Brongn. There is some further 
mention of this plant by the elder Hitchcock in 1861.‘ In his paper 
Dr. Hitchcock, jr., speaks of other specimens of what he supposed to 
be Clathropteris in the cabinet of Amherst College, taken from the 
quarry of Roswell Field, in Gill, Massachusetts. These specimens are 
not figured, but from the description Dr. Hitchcock gives of them 
Professor Fontaine concludes that they can hardly representa Clathrop- 
teris, and are probably Dictyophyllum or Camptopteris. 
In a paper by Dr. James Deane on the Sandstone Fossils of Con- 
necticut River (Turners Falls, Massachusetts), published in the 
Journal of the American Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel- 
phia for November, 1856,° he figured one specimen (pl. xix, fig. a) 
which was thought by Professor Gray to be the ‘‘leaf scars of some 
plant like a tree fern,” and which Professor Dana could refer ‘to 
nothing but a plant, the prominences being the traces of leaves, prob- 
ably coniferous;” but he admitted it was ‘‘not like any known conif- 
erous plant, ancient or modern” (see p. 177). Dr. Deane, however, 
did not share these opinions, and says of this specimen: 
I think in the present state of science it is impossible to explain the origin of this 
elegant fossil. If the accumulated bodies that constitute the various lines of impres- 
sions be not due to the deciduous fronds of plants, they must be taken for the der- 
inoid protuberances of some animal. There is not the slightest evidence of a 
compressed stem of a coniferous or other plant, which should certainly be the case 
in so perfect a specimen; and, moreover, upon the superior or superincumbent 
stratum the imprint is reversed; it is a cast, and this, it appears to me, is conclusive 
evidence against a vegetable origin. 
In his Ichnology of New England* Dr. Edward Hitchcock speaks}. 
on page 6, of the fern (Clathropteris rectiusculus) described by Dr. 
'Loc., cit., p. 202. ; ; 
2 Description of a new speciey of Clathropteris, discovered in the Connecticut Valley sandstone, by 
Dr. E. Hitchcock, jr.: Am. Jour. Sci., 2d series, Vol. XX, 1855, pp. 22-25. 
8Mon. U.S. Geol. Survey, Vol. VI, 1883, p. 57. 
4Proc. Am. Assoc. Ady. Sci., Vol. XIV, pp. 158-159. 
52d series, Vol. III, pp. 173-178, pl. xviii-xx. ; : 
6Ichnology of New England: A Report on the Sandstone of the Connecticut Valley, made to the 
Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, by Edward Hitchcock; Boston, 1858, 4°. See 
pp. 6, 8, pl. v, fig. 1; pl. vii, figs. 1 and 2. 
20 GEOL, PT 2 15 
