WARD.] THE TAYLORSVILLE, CALIFORNIA, AREA. 383 
the beds. The first installment received was sent to Professor Fon- 
taine for determination, and he reported upon it, under date of Decem- 
ber 8, 1891, as follows: 
I have carefully examined the small collection of fossil plants made by Mr. J. S. 
Diller in northern California, which you sent to me for determination. 
The plants are very fragmentary, and most of them are poorly preserved. The 
most distinct are a small Equisetum and several ferns with small pinnules. The ferns 
are the most numerous, but unfortunately they present mostly such portions as the 
tips of pinne and detached fragments of pinne. The amount of material is not 
sufficient to enable one to determine with positiveness their relations to previously 
described forms, for ferns are so notoriously variable in foliage that a considerable 
amount of material is needed to make reliable determinations. Still, taking the col- 
lection as a whole, and looking to the nearest relationships with previously known 
fossil plants, we may arrive at some results with a considerable degree of certainty. 
The plants are certainly younger than Paleozoic, and as the elements of the flora dre 
ferns, equiseta, cycads, and conifers, with no trace of dicotyledons, they are Meso- 
zoic, most probably older than Cretaceous, with the possible exception of its very 
base. 
Owing to the imperfection of the material and the absence of the type forms, I 
can not come to a positive conclusion as to the exact position in the Mesozoic of these 
plants, but I think the weight of evidence is strongly in favor of the flora being 
Rhetic or uppermost Trias. 
The following enumeration of determinable forms will give the reasons for this 
conclusion: 
1. Equisetum Muensteri (Sternb.) Brongn.? This Equisetum is one of the most com- 
mon and best-preserved fossils in the Forman slates. It has a small stem, the largest 
imprints indicating a diameter not greater than one inch. The character of the teeth 
and the small size cause it to differ decidedly from the large equiseta of. the Older 
Trias. There are no good characters separating it from EH. Muensteri, as figured by 
Schenk in his Grenzschichten, while some of the imprints remind one of EF. Lyeilit. 
2. Podozamites or Pterophyllum. This is a strap-shaped fragment showing no 
base and no tips. Hence its true place can not be determined. The nerves are 
parallel, and appear to fork at one end of the leaf, which is probably the basal end. 
The imprint is most probably that of a Podozamites, but it may be a Pterophyllum. 
It seems to be very rare. ! : 
3. A small fern. This has very small pinnules shown on small detached fragments 
of pinne, which have the general aspect of those of a Pecopteris. They show no 
nerves, and are granulated with what seem to be sori covering the surface of the 
pinnules. This is probably the fructification of Acrostichites, to which genus we may 
perhaps regard the fern as belonging. It is, however, smaller in pinnules than any 
previously described Acrostichites. It is rare.” 
4, Asmall fern. This, in the form of its pinnules, resembles a Sphenopteris, but 
the fructified forms show the pinnules apparently covered with sori, producing a 
granulation, which makes this, too, probably an Acrostichites. The sterile pinnules 
of this fern remind one of Schenk’s Coniopteris Braunii.* 
5. Asmallfern. This hassmall pinnules, or segments of pinnz, which are in shape 
similar to Acrostichites microphyllus of the Virginia Rhetic formation, as described in 
in Mon. U.S. Geol. Survey, Vol. VI, but the species is a new one, with ultimate pinne 
shorter than those of any previously described Acrostichites. It seems to be clearly 
an Acrostichites, for the fructified pinnules show the characteristic granulation. In 
1 We wili call this Podozamites ? taylorsvillensis Ward, n. sp. 
2This may be called Acrostichites ? fructifer Ward, n. sp. r 
3 Let this bear the name Acrostichites ? coniopteroides Ward, u1. sp. 
es 
