FONTAINE] THE EMMONS COLLECTION. 279 
that in future these strata will be extensively explored. The case, 
however, was quite different when Emmons was State geologist. 
There was at one time great activity in the search for coal. The upper 
portion of the Older Mesozoic had not then been shown to be without 
workable coal. Ina number of places these beds contain thin seams 
of coal, enough to have caused trial pits to be sunk. A great many of 
these pits were opened, and in a number of cases they afforded well- 
preserved plants. Emmons’s position as State geologist gave him 
unusual opportunities both for hearing of the plants and for collecting 
them. Fortunately he appreciated the importance of taking advan- 
tage of them. 
With the passing away of the inducement to search for coal in the 
upper measures all opportunity for collecting in them ceased. The 
shallow pits soon filled up and all trace of them disappeared, so that 
in time no one even remembered them. I had occasion to note these 
pits. When it proved impossible to find in North Carolina any trace 
of Emmons’s collection it was thought advisable to visit the localities 
mentioned by him as giving him his most abundant and best fossils. 
This was done, and the outcome was complete failure to find Emmons’s 
localities or any others. No one remembered them. The exposures 
of rocks are few and poor and showed no recognizable plants. It was 
evident that Emmons owed his success in collecting plants to the 
exceptional conditions mentioned above, under which he operated. 
The Emmons plants found in the Williams College collections being 
the best representatives of the Older Mesozoic flora of North Caro- 
lina, Professor Ward requested me to study them. I visited Williams 
College in the summer of 1898 and made a careful examination of the 
North. Carolina material. It is the object of this paper to give the 
results obtained. 
In this material most of the plants figured and described by Dr. 
Emmons were found. There are, besides the type specimens, many 
duplicates of some of the forms. and some that were not given in the 
published figures and descriptions. 
