250 



NOTE ON THE FLORA OF THE COAL MEASURES. 



(David White.) 



The palaeobotany of the Sydney coal field, in Cape Breton, 

 engaged the attention of the pioneers in palaeontology in 

 Canada. The flora was first examined by Sir Charles Lyell 

 who, in his "Travels in North America", catalogued the 

 fossils plants found by him at the mines. The paper by 

 C. J. F. Bunbury, who carefully described about 50 species 

 from Sydney in the collection of Richard Brown, is a corner- 

 stone in the Paleeozoic palaeobotany of North America. 

 Two of the excellently illustrated species, Neuropteris 

 rarinervis and Neuropteris cordata [Neuropteris scheu- 

 chzeri] are most characteristic and omnipresent in the 

 Alleghany formation and its contemporaries in the coal 

 fields of the United States. They are present also in the 

 lower part of the Coal Measures of many of the basins of 

 Europe, and specimens indistinguishable from those of the 

 second species found in Cape Breton are assocciated with 

 some of the coals of central China. In the Appalachian 

 trough the two species occur sparingly also in the Mercer 

 group and within the synchronous topmost part of the 

 Kanawha formation, but they are unknown in the older 

 beds of the Upper Carboniferous. Didyopteris ohliqiia 

 and Odontopteris suhcuneata, species founded by Bunbury, 

 are present also in Europe as well as in the United States, 

 where they are characteristic of a restricted zone. 



The flora of the Sydney coal field was further elaborated 

 by Dawson in a number of papers. About 115 species 

 are reported from this coal field, but, unfortunately, the 

 descriptions are generally so meagre and the illustrations so 

 inadequate in most cases that the palaeontologist is hardly 

 able, merely from the examination of the reports, satisfac- 

 torily to determine the positions of the plant-bearing beds 

 in the cosmopolitan time classification. However, it would 

 appear from the comparison of Dawson's list that the species 

 as a whole, cited as belonging to the"Middle Coal formation" 

 of Cape Breton, are of slightly later date than those noted 

 from the same formation in the Joggins section, being 

 approximately referable to either the "transition series" 

 or the basal portion of the Upper Coal Measures in Great 

 Britain, and to the base of the European Stephanian, which 



