WARD, ] THE JURASSIC FLORA. 3385 
and of the cycad-bearing beds of the Black Hills (Lakota formation of 
Darton). The former of these questions has been much discussed and 
it will suffice to refer to its recent literature.’ 
Mr. Jules Marcou, in a somewhat acrimonious article on the Triagsic 
flora of Richmond, Virginia, published in 1890,” alludes (p. 161) to 
a “Jurassic florula” found by Dr. Newberry in 1858 at the Moqui 
Pueblo in New Mexico. Although I presumed he referred to Dr. New- 
berry’s report in the Report of the Colorado River of the West by 
Lieutenant Ives, 1861, still there was some uncertainty, and I therefore 
called Dr. Newberry’s attention to the matter and asked him whether 
he recognized any true Jurassic floras in America. There was some 
further correspondence, and some extracts from his letters are well 
worth publishing in the present connection. He says: 
The fossil plants to which you refer are described in the geological part of the Ives 
Colorado report, page 129, pl. iii. The deposit from which this handful of plants 
was taken is quite near to the Moqui villages, a few miles south of the table-land on 
which are situated the towns known as ‘‘ Mooshanove”’ and ‘‘Shungopave,’’ and at 
a point where the Moquis obtained clay for their pottery. The Dakota sandstone, 
with its dicotyledonous leaves, rests on these clays and they contain much lignite; 
below them are the highly colored marls which form the top of the Trias. 
The Jurassic (‘‘Atlantosaurus’’) beds—sandstones and shales with Saurian bones— 
occur just beneath the Dakota and upon the Triassic marls 150 miles north from 
this locality, but they are fresh-water deposits and local. No Jurassic rocks have 
been detected in that part of Arizona where these plants occur, and the Jurassic 
rocks seem to thin out toward the south and not to cross the north line of Arizona 
or New Mexico. At Abiquiu, 60 miles north and west of Santa Fe, the Dakota sand- 
stone rests upon strata which contain unmistakable Triassic plants, but all are differ- 
ent from those at the Moqui villages. As that group of plants and the clay and 
lignite in which they occur have not been recognized anywhere else we are abso- 
lutely without proof of their age. Because these plants are different from those 
known to be Upper Triassic in New Mexico I have been inclined to regard them as 
Jurassic, but have never asserted that they were such, nor indeed that they were 
Triassic or anything else. 5 
I have always been doubtful about the geological position of the lignites and the 
clay beds at the Moqui villages. This doubt is due to the facts that the lignite and 
clay beds have not been identified elsewhere, and that the small number of plants 
obtained from them are different specifically from any found elsewhere in the world. 
It will be impossible, therefore, for any man, however learned and wise, to assign an 
age to the Moqui florula without more facts to base a conclusion on. 
I never really regarded the Moqui plants as Cretaceous, because the beds which con- 
tain the: are overlain by the Dakota sandstone, which, when my report was written, 
1$ee papers by Prof. 0. C. Marsh in the Sixteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey for 1894-95, Pt. I, 
1896, pp. 133-414; Am. Jour. Sci., 4th Ser., Vol. II, October, 1896, pp. 295-298; November, 1896, pp. 375- 
377; December, 1896, pp. 433-447; Vol. VI, August, 1898, pp. 105-115, 197; Science, N.S., Vol. VIII, August 
5, 1898, pp. 145-154—by G. K. Gilbert in Science, N. S., Vol. IV, December 11, 1896, pp. 875-877—by 
Jules Marcou in Am. Jour. Sci., 4th Ser., Vel. IV, September, 1897, pp. 197-212—by Robert T. Hill in 
Science, N.S., Vol. IV, December 18, 1896, pp. 918-920; Am. Jour. Sci., 4th Ser., Vol. IV, December, 
1897, pp. 449-469—by Lester F. Ward in Science, N. 8., Vol. V, March 12, 1897, pp. 411-423; Nineteenth 
Ann. Rept. U.S. Geol. Survey for 1897-98, Pt. II, 1899, pp. 521-946—by William B. Clark in The Phys- 
ical Features of Maryland, Maryland Geological Survey, April, 1897, 4°—by Clark and Bibbins in Journal 
of Geology, Vol. V, July-August, 1897, pp. 479-506—by Arthur Hollick in Proc. Am. Assn. Ady. Sci., 
Vol. XLVII, 1898, pp. 292-293. 
2Am. Geologist, Vol. V, March, 1890, pp. 160-174. 
