WARD, ] THE JURASSIC FLORA. 839 
tion from the Knoxville beds, which are all boxed up and ready to go to you. I also 
got a very few minute fragments of the tips of branches that resemble these from 
the true Mariposa beds (Jurassic). I hardly know what genus to refer them to. 
Will you please look at them and see whether you recognize them readily, and say 
what they seem to be most like? 
Very sincerely yours, Lister F. Warp. 
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Vircinta, February 12, 1896. 
Dear Mr. Warp: I return the specimens of Mr. Merriam by this day’s mail. 
The only Jurassic genus known to me that may contain these fossils is Elatides of 
Heer, provided we grant that he correctly places in it the leafy twigs, which he 
describes in Vol. IV, Pt. II, Flor. Foss. Arct., page 79, and figures on pl. xiv, figs. 6, 6b, 
6d. Heer founded the genus on cones, but there is nothing except his experience 
to call for the association of these branches with the cones. 
The leaves are most strikingly like those of Sequoia Reichenbachi, especially those 
of the Potomac form, which I made the variety longifolia (see pl. cxvii, fig. 8, of 
Mon. U. 8. Geol. Survey, Vol. XV). I see no difference. The leaves of Merriam’s 
fossils are probably not shown in their full width, owing to imperfect preservation. 
They appear fully as long as the longest of the Potomac form. They are too long 
and narrow for the typical S. Reichenbachi. Clearly the plant is a Sequoia of the 
Reichenbachi type, and if it were a true S. Reichenbachi I do not think that would 
forbid the conclusion that the strata are uppermost Jurassic, as this Sequoia persists 
so long. Still, under the circumstances, I would not identify it with S. Reichenbachi, 
even as a variety, but would consider it provisionally a new species of the well- 
marked Reichenbachi type. It may be an ancestral form of that species. I do not 
think that these fossils can throw any light of value on the question of the age of the 
beds. So far as they show any indication, they rather incline to lowest Cretaceous. 
Yours trul 
ee Wm. M. Fontatne. 
Wasuineton, D. C., February 15, 1896. 
Prof. Joun C. Merriam, Berkeley, Cahfornia. 
My Dear Proressor Merriam: I return herewith, by mail, the fossils from beds 
below the Knoxville, and inclose Professor Fontaine’s report thereon. You will see 
how nearly it agrees with what I said, and while it may not be very comforting, you 
can rest assured that it is the best that can be done in the present state of science. 
I have talked with Dr. Stanton, who has seen the shells from the same beds, and 
he makes almost exactly the same statement with regard to them., He says they 
rather point to lowest Cretaceous, and I think, perhaps, it may be safe to say that 
these beds form a transition from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous. However, I do not 
feel confident, from the small amount of evidence which has thus far been produced.” 
Very sincerely yours, Dacre 
As in the former case, so in this, while there is some doubt, the 
weight of evidence thus far appears to be against the Jurassic age of 
this plant-bearing deposit. 
PLANT-BEARING DEPOSITS OF UNDOUBTED JURASSIC AGE. 
One of Mr. H. W. Turner’s assistants, A. I. Oliver, collected in 1894 
in the Mariposa beds of California in Yaqui Gulch, Mariposa County, 
5 miles south of Princeton (Bullion Mountain), a small fragment of a 
fern, which came in due time into my hands. In his letter, dated Jan- 
