1885.] Geology and Faleontology. 699 
or the country of deep wells; sheet No. 10 gives the western 
half of the Sahara, and shows the routes of travelers, with man 
notes on the inhabitants, nature of the country, and position of 
the oases and wells and sheet No. 11 hasa portion of the Ahaggar 
region, of arn little is really known, and the better known Tuat 
oasis aud has finally been co ompelled to desist from 
his attempted Saniat, His men deserted him, retaining the 
French flag and Chassepôt rifles, and turned highwaymen on 
their way back to Zanzibar, where they were cast into prison by 
the French consul. Major Serpa Pinto is at Mjuani, on the 
shores of the fine harbor of Nakala, which extends inward from 
Fernão Veloso bay.——M. F. S. Arnot has sent to the Royal 
Geographical Society a sketch-map of his route from Shoshong to 
Bihé. He followed the Zambesi, from his point of crossing, a 
little above Victoria falls to Lialui, from which he proceeded west- 
north-west to the great plateau on which Bihé is situated. 
Petermann’s Mittheilungen (31 Band, 1885, 111) contains a map 
of Zululand and the gold fields of the South African republic, 
with a descriptions The previous issue gives a chart of Stella- 
land. 
GEOLOGY AND PALAONTOLOGY. 
Str WīiLLIAM Dawson ON THE Mesozoic FLORAS OF THE 
Rocky MOUNTAIN REGION OF Canapa.’—In a previous memoir, 
published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 
Vol. 1, the author had noticed a Lower Cretaceous flora consist- 
ing wholly of pines and cycads, occurring in the Queen Char- 
lotte islands, and had described a dicotyledonous flora of Middle 
Cretaceous age from the country adjacent to the Peace river, and 
also the rich Upper poker flora of the coal formation of 
Vancouver’s island—comparing these with the flora of the Lar- 
amie series of the Northwest Territory, which he believed to 
constitute a transition group connecting the Upper Cretaceous 
with the Eocene Tertiary. 
The present paper pekebréed more particularly to a remarkable 
Jurasso-cretaceous flora recently discovered by Dr. G. M. Daw- 
son in the Rocky mountains, and to intermediate groups of 
plants between this and the Middl e Cretaceous, serving to extend 
greatly our knowledge of the Lower Cretaceous flora, and to 
render more complete the series of plants between this and the 
Laramie. 
The oldest of these floras is found in beds which it is proposed 
_to call the Kootanie group, from a tribe of Indians of that name 
who hunted over that part of the Rocky mountains between the 
49th and 52d parallels. Plants of this age have been found on 
the branches of the Old Man river, on the Martin creek, at Coal 
1 Read before the Royal Society of Canada, May, 1885. 
