54 General Notes. (January, 
Vegetable Palxontology, as it has been for a long time exposed by the 
works and descriptions of American authors,’and this facies becomes more 
and more distinct in the more recent periods. The precedence of vegeta- 
ble types in the geological flora of this continent is distinctly recognized, - 
and therefore the hypothesis of the derivation of the North American 
flora from Miocene European types is necessarily set aside. On this 
last question, former remarks in this paper prove the unity of the pres- 
ent flora, derived by constant succession of related vegetable forms from 
the Cretaceous, at least. On the question of precedence of vegetable 
types, it has been remarked that the appearance of land-plants is posi- 
tively recognized in the Silurian of Michigan, while no land-plants have 
as yet been described from formations lower than the Middle Devonian 
of Europe; that also we find already in the Devonian of the United 
States trunks of conifers recognized as prototypes of the Araucaria, 
which are only found later, in the Subcarboniferous of Europe. Our 
Carboniferous flora has a number of its forms appearing later in the 
Permian of Europe. The Triassic flora of Virginia and North Carolina 
is half Jurassic. A number of Cretaceous genera of the Dakota group 
are reproduced in the Miocene of Europe, as they are, too, in some of 
the North American Tertiary vegetable groups, and also in the flora of 
this epoch. Therefore the vegetation of the European Miocene seems 
partly referable to the American Cretaceous. Andin following the 
comparison upward, we find, in what is considered the Eocene of the 
Lignitic of the Rocky Mountains, a larger number of forms identical or 
closely allied to European Miocene species, while the Miocene group of 
Carbon represents the youngest type of the Tertiary flora of Europe 
and Greenland, with species of Platanus, Acer, etc., scarcely distinguish- 
able from indigenous species of our present flora. — Lesquereux’s Review 
of the Fossil Flora of North America. (Bulletin of Hayden’s Survey of 
the Territories, second series, No. 5, November, 1875.) 
OSSIL VERTEBRATES OF New Mexico. — Professor Cope, in a 
preliminary report to Lieutenant Wheeler, in charge of the United 
States Geographical Survey west of the one hundredth meridian, enu- 
merates eighty-three species of vertebrate animals as having been dis- 
covered by him in the deposits of the Eocene lake that once covered the 
northern and western parts of New Mexico. Of these, eight are fishes, 
twenty-four reptiles, and fifty-one mammals. Of the whole number, fifty- 
_ four species were introduced for the first time to the notice of scientists. 
This fauna is nearly related to that of the Eocene of Wyoming in many 
respects, but differs in the different distribution of many of the genera. 
Thus, Paleosyops, a genus abundant in Wyoming, is not found in New 
Mexico, while Bathmodon, which does not occur in the Bridger beds of 
Wyoming, is the most abundant type in New Mexico, parts of over one 
hundred and fifty individuals belonging to seven species having been 
found by Professor Cope. Small tapiroid animals of the genus Ovohip- 
