342 J. S. Newberry — I? Acetic Plants from Honduras. 



Aet. XXX VII. — Rhoetic Plants from Honduras ; by J. S. 

 Newbekry. With. Plate VIII. 



In 1886 Mr. Chas. M. Rolker, a mining engineer and 



graduate of the School of Mines, brought from San Juancito, 

 Honduras, among other geological specimens, a piece of meta- 

 morphosed shale containing several impressions of the fronds 

 of cycads. As no Mesozoic fossils had before been found in 

 this region the discovery interested me much and I have since 

 made earnest efforts to obtain other specimens from the same 

 locality. Mr. Kolker kindly seconded these efforts and wrote 

 to Mr. T. II. Leggett, E.M., who was located at San Juancito, 

 giving him all the information he possessed in regard to the 

 locality where the fossils were found, and soliciting his coopera- 

 tion. This was cordially granted, with interesting results. 



The specimen brought by Mr. Rolker was a loose piece 

 picked up on the surface and nearly two years passed before 

 its place of origin was ascertained. In January last I received 

 a letter from Mr. Leggett announcing the discovery of the 

 plant beds and the shipment to me of a box of fossils. These 

 were exhibited at a meeting of the N. Y. Academy of Sciences 

 on Jan. 30, 1888, and were briefly described in the Transac- 

 tions of the Academy, vol. vii, p. 113. Since that time Mr. 

 Leggett has returned to New York bringing another box of 

 fossils from the same place, among which are some additional 

 species. 



From the notes furnished me by Mr. Leggett it appears that 

 the plant beds of San Juancito form part of a series of argilla- 

 ceous shales now converted into hydromica schists several 

 hundred feet in thickness. Below these, limestones crop out 

 which are said to contain Carboniferous fossils, while above 

 them are heavy masses of eruptive rock. The plant-bearing 

 shales are much disturbed and metamorphosed, and are cut by 

 a series of silver-bearing veins which have been worked for 

 many years with considerable success. The outcrops which 

 contain the plants are much decomposed and few good speci- 

 mens have been obtained from them, but the number of species 

 represented is large and it is evident that further excavation 

 would result in the accumulation of much interesting material. 



The age of the deposit as indicated by its plants is plainly 

 Upper Triassic and the flora as a whole has a great resemblance 

 to that of the coal-bearing strata on the Yaki river in Sonora, 

 Mexico, described by me in the Report of the San Juan Ex- 

 ploring Expedition, and to that described by Schenk in Die 

 Fossile Flora dar Grenzschichten des Keujpers und Lias 



