1897.] Geology and Paleontology. 609 
The paleontology of the Territory is made the subject of special 
papers by Knowlton, Schuchert, and Hyatt which appear as appendices 
to Dr. Dall’s report. The fossil flora embraces 115 forms, the most of 
which appear to be of Eocene or Oliogocene age. Mr. Knowlton con- 
cludes from a comparison of the Alaskan fossil flora with that of Green- 
land Spitzbergen and the island of Sakhalin that they are all so closely 
related that they probably grew under similar conditions and were 
synchronously deposited. 
Faunal collections from Alaska are meager. As yet a few forms 
only, representing Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Mesozoic 
beds, are known. According to Hyatt, the existence of the Cretaceous 
has not yet been demonstrated in Alaska, unless the Ancellæ described 
by Eichwald are Cretacic species. (Seventeenth Ann. Rept. U. S. 
Geol. Survey Pt. I, Washington, 1896.) 
Phylogeny of Demonelix.—The strange fossil, popularly known 
as Devil’s Corkscrew, has been of interest since its first discovery in 
1891. During a recent expedition to the Loup Fork Tertiary Mr. E. 
H. Barbour made a study of these fossils in situ where a succession of 
them were exposed in a canyon. In passing from the lower beds to the 
higher forms varying from simplicity and uniformity to those of ever- 
increasing diversity and complexity are found, the climax being reached 
in the topmost beds. The simplest form of the Demonelix series is a 
hollow tubule or fiber, and the author’s belief is that it is according to 
th t tion of these fibers that tl Itifarious forms 
result. 
The second form, for lack of a better name, is termed “ Dsemonelix 
Cakes.” They are commonly circular in form, 5 to 10 centimeters 
across, and form 4 to 2 centimeters thick. They lie in horizontal planes 
through a vertical range of some six to eight meters. Overlying these 
were “balls,” very similar to the preceding forms, but smaller in cir- 
cumference and of greater complexity structurally. 
The third form resembles cigars or fingers. In outward appearance 
they have acquired a pronounced vertical habit and a noticeable tend- 
ency to a spiral form. They are about the size of an ordinary cane. 
These are succeeded by an irregular spiral form, found through a ver- 
tical range of six to eight meters in the middle beds. This form, as 
well as the preceding, ends in blunt rounded terminations sealed or 
capped with fibers, leaving neither exit or entrance for supposed 
occupants of so-called burrows. Lastly we have the “ Deemonelix reg- 
ular.” A sheer wall exposes to view a section 40 to 45 meters from 
