22 ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 480 



Students, interested youngsters, and elderly people alike are still en- 

 countered, particularly in the spring, scouring the spoils piles of the vast strip 

 mine areas of Will and Grundy Counties. Much of the Mazon Creek area is closed 

 to collectors, so permission to enter private property must be obtained. Visitors 

 usually must sign liability waivers before collecting on mine property. 



Students on a brief, one-day excursion to the Mazon Creek area may be 

 disappointed that their discoveries are not as spectacular as those in museum or 

 university collections . But the Lang ford, McLuckie, Carr, Daniels, Thompson, 

 and other significant amateur collections were built up over many years and before 

 the area had been visited by so many collectors. 



Several colleges in Illinois have important local plant collections. The 

 Jelliff collection is at Knox College in Galesburg, and Augustana College in Rock 

 Island also has an outstanding collection. The collecting of local fossil floras 

 for special projects or theses is good training for students, and the resulting col- 

 lections are useful for broader investigations. Collinson and Skartvedt (1960) pre- 

 pared a field book for the Illinois Geological Survey Educational Series that de- 

 scribes the Pennsylvanian plant fossils found in Illinois and discusses collecting 

 areas. 



Visits of European Paleobotanists 



Rudolph Florin (1933) from Sweden visited the U.S. National Museum in 

 Washington and prepared a study on Megaloyteris specimens, some of them from 

 the Illinois Basin. The same year, W.J. Jongmans came to the United States in 

 connection with the International Geological Congress in Washington. Jongmans 

 had made important contributions to Carboniferous stratigraphy in Europe and he 

 had long considered the correlation with North American strata. After the Congress 

 in Washington, D. C, Jongmans toured the United States for several weeks, 

 spending nine days in Illinois. A. C. Noe, Harold R. Wanless, and J. Marvin 

 Weller took him to all the better known plant localities . Jongmans and Noe had 

 some intense arguments about the nomenclature of the plants, and at the end of 

 the trip Jongmans stated that none of the more common species observed in Illinois 

 were unknown in Europe (H.R. Wanless, personal communication) . Jongmans pub- 

 lished a paper (Jongmans and Gothan, 1934) in which he stated that there was no 

 Stephanian equivalent in Illinois. This was criticized by Noe (1936), who was in 

 better agreement with modern interpretations when he placed the McLeansboro 

 Group in the Stephanian. Bertrand (1935), after perusal of published data and 

 some collections, came to a conclusion similar to Noe's. 



Recalling the visits of Jongmans and Bertrand to the United States in 1933, 

 Darrah wrote us: 



Paul Bertrand and W. J. Jongmans arranged extensive private field trips 

 through the American Carboniferous, ranging from the anthracite region to 

 the bituminous region of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, then 

 to Illinois and Kansas. Each wished to examine the Carboniferous exten- 

 sively — Jongmans from the MIssissippian to the Permian; Bertrand the Penn- 

 sylvanian only. David White arranged for me to meet Jongmans in Pottsville, 

 accompany him through the anthracite region and then escort him in the 

 field in western Pennsylvania. Other persons escorted Jongmans in the sev- 

 eral states he visited. A bitter feeling developed over Jongman's American 



