290 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



from the Cretaceous. The recent discpvery by Schweinfurth of a fruit, 

 Falmacites rimosus, Heer, * in the Upper Cretaceous white chalk of the 

 oasis of Chargeh, west of Thebes (about 25° latitude north), is another 

 evidence of the presence of palms in the Upper Cretaceous. That, how- 

 ever, remains of this kind are extremely rare even at the end of the 

 Cretaceous is proved by the importance attached to the discovery of a 

 fruit of this kind in a region under the tropic. From the Paleocene, as 

 represented in the floras of Gelinden and of Sezane, no species of Palms 

 have been positively determined. For the fragments described in this 

 last flora under the generic name of Ludoviopsis are indefinitely referred 

 by the author either to the Pandanese orto the Palms. As yet, of the fifty 

 species of known fossil Palms from their fronds, twenty belong to the Mio- 

 cene, especially to its lower stage; eight are described from the Tertiary of 

 Italy, without reference to any of its divisions, nine are Oligocene, twelve 

 Eocene, and one Cretaceous. Of the eight species of Sabal described, one 

 species is Miocene, two Oligocene, and five Eocene. iSahal andegavensis 

 Schp., and 8. precursoria Schp., two species of the Upper Eocene of 

 France, are very closely related, the first to Sabal communis of Golden, 

 the other to Sahal Gray ana found in many localities of the Lower Lignitic, 

 from Mississippi to Vancouver. In considering the Lignitic flora by the 

 specimens of fossil plants from Black Butte, Golden, Colorado Springs, 

 the Raton Mountains, «&c., where the preponderance of remains of 

 Sabal and Flabellaria is so marked, how could it be possible, if even we 

 had no other characters for direction, to refer it to the Cretaceous ? The 

 above speaks plainly, and shows how I had to recognize the flora of 

 Vancouver as Tertiary, from the numerous specimens of Sabal sent by 

 Professor Evans from Nanaimo, even if the other plants of the locality 

 had not represented Tertiary types. It was the same case for the flora 

 of the Mississippi State, where the Palms are also in preponderance. At 

 Point of Rocks, four large specimens upon sandstone represent the same 

 species of Sabal as that of Vancouver and Mississippi, S. Grayana, which, 

 in the opinion of a celebrated European paleontologist, is one of the 

 finest arid most positively characterized species of the genus. 



The two species of Dryophyllum described from Point of Rocks are 

 indicated in the table of distribution as analogous to the Eocene. This 

 genus represents a separate section of the oaks, corresponding by the 

 form of the leaves and the indentations of their borders to the Chestnut- 

 oaks of the present North American flora. Messrs. Debey and Etting- 

 hausen have separated it for the classification of some leaves found in the 

 Cretaceous of Belgium. It represents, therefore, a Cretaceous type, which, 

 however, like some others of the same formation, Fa,gus, Platanus, &c., 

 does not appear to have reached its full development from or at its origin. 

 We see it, for example, in the Dakota group flora, in the proportion of 

 two species in about one hundred and thirty, while in the Paleocene flora 

 of Gelinden it has four species in thirty", and the same number in forty- 

 eight in the flora of Sezane. It then re-appears by more or less numer- 

 ous representatives in analogous species of Quercus, and may therefore 

 be followed nearly without interruption to the present time. From this 

 it is clear that the reference of fossil species of this genus, when 

 remarked in connection with remains of Tertiary plants, should more 

 appropriately pertain to the Eocene than to the Cretaceous. Therefore 

 if the presence of species of Dryophyllum in the Point of Rocks flora, 

 and that also of Fitsia, Sequoia bifor7nis, and Sequoia longifolia, im- 



* Ueber fossile fruchte der Oase Chargeh, 0. Heer, in Denks. der Schweiz, Naturf. 

 Gesells., vol. xxvii, 1876. 



