8 ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 480 



degree at Cornell University. Although he was employed to help Lester F. Ward 

 illustrate the Laramie and Fort Union floras, it was not long until White began his 

 own paleobotanical research (Mendenhall, 1937). 



White's first publication from the Illinois Basin was an investigation of 

 the flora of the "Hindostan Whetstone beds'" from western Indiana, which is the 

 oldest known Pennsylvanian flora in the basin (White, 1896). The only other pub- 

 lications about this flora have been the description of two new species of Leipido- 

 strobus by Hoskins and Cross (1940, 1943b) and a comparison of the flora with 

 floras of the Westphalian A of Europe by Bode (1958) . 



White (1907, 1908, 1909) published short reports on his summer work and 

 used plant fossils for stratigraphic correlation within the Illinois Basin and for 

 correlation of the basin with the Appalachian region. He remarked on the peculiar 

 Megalopteris flora in the northwestern part of Illinois and revised some of the 

 statements on stratigraphy made by Lesquereux. White (1907) noted that plant fos- 

 sils were extremely rare in roof shales of the Springfield (No. 5) and Herrin (No. 6) 

 Coal Members of the Carbondale Formation. This difficulty in finding plant mega- 

 fossils (compressions and impressions) in many places limited their use in correla- 

 tion and led to the development of and preference for palynology in the 1930s. Nev- 

 ertheless, White's stratigraphic interpretations were widely accepted by geologists 

 of that time. Leighton (inNoe, 1925c), writing of White's contribution, said, 



White's work led to a general correlation of the strata of the Illinois 

 coal field with the eastern field, and to a division of the Pennsylvanian 

 System into three series: the Pottsville (lowest), the Carbondale, and 

 the McLeansboro. 



White also pointed out stratigraphic problems that still existed. 



In his third summer in Illinois, White collected plant fossils mainly in 

 Caseyville ("Pottsville") strata in southern Illinois and began to write a manu- 

 script. Completion of the manuscript was delayed by administrative duties when 

 White became Chief Geologist of the U. S. Geological Survey in 1912 and by his 

 paleobotanical investigations in other parts of the United States. Schopf {per- 

 sonal communication, 1971) stated that the study of the Pottsville flora continued 

 intermittently and was nearly complete at the time of White's death in 1935. Ac- 

 cording to J. A. Simon, the present Principal Geologist of the Illinois State Geo- 

 logical Survey, shortly after White's death, arrangements were made by the Illi- 

 nois and United States Geological Surveys to complete the manuscript under super- 

 vision of Charles B. Read of the Federal Survey. Harold R. Wanless agreed to 

 provide a chapter on stratigraphy, the first draft of which he supplied in 1938. As 

 late as 1940, the Illinois Survey still hoped to publish the manuscript as a mono- 

 graph, but shortly thereafter it deemed that the voluminous text and book of plates 

 would be beyond Survey printing resources. The Federal Survey then planned to 

 publish the report as a special paper. The stratigraphic section was revised by 

 Wanless in 1952 and substantially revised again in 1970, just before his death. 



Jackson and Foerste 



From the lower part of the Pennsylvanian in the Indiana portion of the basin, 

 Jackson (1916) described 50 species of plant compressions, including numerous 

 new species of ovules. 



