A. C. Peale — Application of the Term Laramie. 49 



" First Series. — The coal strata, Lower Eocene, character- 

 ized by numerous impressions of deciduous leaves, marine and 

 fresh water Mollusca. 



Second Series. — Arenaceous, Upper Eocene, characterized 

 l)y a profusion of fresh water shells, as U~?iio, Goniobasis, 

 Viviparus, Lymnaea, etc. and a portion of these being casts." 



On the next page, he says " The first series is the Laramie 

 or Lignitic Group ; the second, the Wahsatch or Vermillion 

 Creek group, the former name having the priority, and hav- 

 ing been attached to the great group of reddish sands, clays, 

 and conglomerates, west of Fort Bridger in 1870. This 

 group has been found to extend southward through western 

 Colorado into JN T ew Mexico."* 



As just noted, Hayden considered the Wahsatch and Fort 

 Union to be identical in whole or in part, a position that Dr. 

 Knowlton informs me was verified by him by his field studies 

 in 1908. In the diagrammatic section accompanying his paper 

 Hayden shows the Laramie divided into two groups resting 

 upon the Fox Hills. 



The next one to use the term was Dr. C. A. White,f who in 

 the same volume of the Bulletin gives two generalized sec- 

 tions ; one of the Green River Region, in which he places the 

 Laramie Group in its proper place above the Fox Hills Creta- 

 ceous, and the other a section in the Upper Missouri River 

 region in which the Laramie does not occur, but in which the 

 Judith River Group is placed between the Fox Hills and the 

 Fort Union. 



In the descriptive Geology, vol. ii, of the Reports of the 

 Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel, which bears the 

 imprint of the year 1877, Mr. Arnold Hague gives on page 60 

 the first printed description of the Laramie, beginning : "The 

 Fox Hill strata pass by imperceptible gradations into the Lara- 

 mie series, offering no well-defined lines of separation, both 

 formations from top to bottom consisting of coarse sandstone." 

 Mr. Hague, after describing the geology of the Cretaceous 

 plains of Colorado, on the succeeding page (61) presents the 

 first section ever published of the Laramie which was measured 

 at the extreme northern limit of the Laramie formation about 

 18 miles southwest from Cheyenne, and 5 or 6 miles west 

 from Carr Station on the Denver Pacific Railroad. 



This section, if any should be so considered, would be the 

 typical Laramie section. Other Laramie localities east of the 

 Colorado Range and the Laramie hills he describes in follow- 

 ing pages. When Hague described the Carbon Basin it is 

 evident from the description (pp. 143-148) that considerable 



*U. S. Geol. and Gcograph. Surv. Ter. Bull., vol. iii, p. 184. 

 flbid., No. 3, pp. 608, 609, May 15, 1877. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXVIII, No. 163.— July, 1909. 

 4 



