454 B. T Hill — The alleged Jurassic of Texas. 



Professor Marcou completely ignores this paper in his writings, 

 and seems to present me to the public as having said things 

 which were never intended. 



Not only does he fail to set forth fairly the work of others, 

 but he even appropriates from them their own substance and 

 converts them to his own end. No better illustration of this 

 can be found than the sentence on page 211 where he speaks 

 of the "true Washita Division as I established it as long ago 

 as 1853 when at Comet Creek near Fort Washita." This asser- 

 tion that he established the Washita Division is absolutely 

 untrue. The two feet of beds at Comet Creek which he saw 

 in 1853 (and this locality is not near Fort Washita, as he states) 

 were never called by him the "Washita Division " or aught 

 else but "Neocomian," nor was the term ever used in scien- 

 tific literature by him until after it had been invented by 

 another. The classification of the beds of the Texas Cre- 

 taceous into "divisions" and the term "Washita Division" 

 was originally made by me and published in this Journal for 

 April, 1896, and amplified in my later papers. Marcou's 

 " Neocomian," Comet Creek hed, is only a single horizon in 

 one of the eight great formations composing the Washita 

 Division, seven of which are shown in my paper entitled the 

 " Geology of Parts of Texas, Indian Territory, and Arkansas 

 Adjacent to Red River (Bull. Geol. Soc. of America, March, 

 1894) and one of which, the Grayson Marls, has been added 

 by Cragin. 



His article is also so full of conclusions with which few 

 Americans will agree, that we can only point out at present a 

 few of the scientific points of disagreement. He dismisses 

 (p. 204) Mr. Knowlton's careful study and identifications of 

 the Dicotyledons'* with the assertion that " no conclusion can 

 be drawn from such a meagre florula." Mr. Knowlton's 

 florula enumerates five characteristic Dakota species. The 

 occurrence of a Dakota-like dicotyledonous flora in Marcou's 

 "Jurassic" beds both in Kansas and also at Gallisteo, New 

 Mexico, as has been noted by Newberry, f is certainly against 

 his hypothesis, but paleo-botanists and geologists in general, who 

 are acquainted with the western United States, know that this 

 flora is distinctly Cretaceous in its facies, and not Jurassic. 

 Professor Marcou neglects to state, and I myself had over- 

 looked the fact, that Newberry* many years ago noted in New 

 Mexico the occurrence of dicotyledonous plants with Marcou's 

 Jurassic oyster in sandstone called Jurassic by Marcou, near 

 Gallisteo, New Mexico. The cycad which the latter men- 

 tions (p. 204) {Cycadeoidea munita of Cragin) was found in the 



* Given in my paper in this Journal of September, 1895, p. 212. 

 f This Journal, vol. xxviii, 1859, p. 33. % Ibid. 



