190 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Von. XL 
DISCOVERIES WHICH SUGGESTED THE PREPARATION OF THIS 
PAPER 
The discoveries which suggested the preparation of this paper 
were described in a previous paper read before the Botanical 
Society of America at the Philadelphia meeting, on December 
380th, 1904.‘ During the autumn of that year an_ interesting 
section of Cretaceous deposits was found exposed in the Andro- 
vette clay pit, at Kreischerville, Staten Island, N. Y. At this 
locality the deposits consist of irregularly stratified sands and 
clays, in one part of which occurs a lens-shaped bed of closely 
packed vegetable débris, consisting of leaves, cone scales, twigs, 
amber, charred wood, and lignite. At that time special attention 
was given to the amber and the other remains were merely exam- 
ined superficially and briefly mentioned. The suggestion was 
made by Dr. Jeffrey that critical examination of the lignitie frag- 
ments would probably produce interesting results, and this sug- 
gestion led to two joint visits to Kreischerville during the past 
year and the collection of a large amount of new material, in part 
from the original locality and the remainder from the nearby 
Drummond pit. Some of the results obtained from the exami- 
nation of this material form the basis of this contribution. 
OBJECT AND SCOPE OF THE INVESTIGATION 
One of the great difficulties in connection with any attempt to 
determine satisfactorily the relationships of paleobotanical speci- 
mens is due to the fact that such specimens are nearly always 
more or less fragmentary, being represented only by dismembered 
parts or organs of plants, and seldom or never by a complete 
individual organism. Under such conditions it is not surprising 
that descriptions based upon superficial characters only have fre- 
quently resulted in erroneous generic determinations ; different 
parts of the same species have often been described under two or 
more specific or generic names; or occasionally a single specific 
‘ Arthur Hollick. “The Occurrence and Origin of Amber in the Eastern 
United States.” Published in Amer. Nat., vol. 29, pp. 137-145, pls. 1-3, 1905. 
