192 J. S. Newberry — Flora of the Great Falls Coal Field. 



that for the most part conceals the coal-bearing rocks and ob- 

 scures the extent and outlines of the basin. The Missouri River 

 has cut through the drift and exposed for many miles a series 

 of pinkish sandstones which form the falls. 



The age of this Great Falls coal basin was for a long time in 

 doubt. Dr. Hayden first visited the locality, but found no 

 fossils, and his experience was repeated by Dr. C. A. White 

 and myself ; although the exposures are ample on Sand Coulee 

 and Belt Creek where the main coal has been extensively mined 

 for years. Casts of stems and branches of trees are abundant 

 in the sandstones, and the miners reported the occurrence of 

 impressions of ferns in the shales over the coal, but after the 

 most careful and thorough search nothing of the kind was 

 found. The coal itself is of fairly good quality, the thicker 

 seam consisting of several benches, of which the lower one, 

 two and a half feet in thickness, makes a very good coke, and 

 the whole will furnish an excellent steam coal for locomotives or 

 stationary engines, will serve well as a household fuel, and is 

 destined to be of great economic importance to the people who 

 shall congregate in this prairie region. 



Subsequent to my return from Great Falls, Mr. J. J. Hill, 

 the president of the Chicago, St. Paul and Manitoba Railroad, 

 in whose interests I made an examination of the coal basin, 

 sent to me a slab of sandstone covered with Unios. This, as 

 was to be expected, proved the fresh water character of the 

 deposits, but the impressions were too ill defined to permit ac- 

 curate, specific determination, and therefore threw no light 

 upon their age. When the railroad along the north side of the 

 Missouri, constructed with such unexampled rapidity by Mr. 

 Hill, reached Great Falls, a cutting near the town passed 

 through shales in which were numerous lenticular nodules of 

 iron ore. Each of these contained a fern frond, a cycad leaf 

 or a twig of a conifer. Some of them were collected by Mr. P. 

 S. Williams of Great Falls, by whom they were sent to Pro- 

 fessor Dana at Xew Haven. He submitted them to me for ex- 

 amination and I found that without exception they were species 

 that had been described by Sir William Dawson from his 

 Kootanie group [Lower Cretaceous] of Canada, or by Professor 

 Heer from the Koine group of Greenland. These included 

 Sequoia Smittiajia Heer ; S. gracilis Heer ; Zamites acuti- 

 joennis Heer ; Z. Montana Dawson, etc. More recently Mr. 

 Williams has sent to me a larger collection of fossil plants con- 

 sisting mostly of ferns, from a different stratum in the Great 

 Falls group. On opening the box I thought I identified a 

 number of these with species described by Professor W. M. 

 Fontaine from the Potomac group in Maryland and Virginia. 

 But that there might be no mistake on a subject of such geo- 



