1874.] 301 [Hunt. 



doubtful fruit mentioned by Dr. Troost, seem to prove that these 

 strata are not without palseontological remains. It may not be well 

 known to American students, (as the amber formation is a very local 

 one, and rich only in eastern Prussia), that the flora and fauna in- 

 cluded in the amber itself, or in the strata just above, have a decided 

 North American character. Professor Gdppert, of Breslau, the 

 eminent botanist, goes even so far as to identify some of the amber 

 plants with some living ones in North America. I should add, that 

 his opinion is not shared by other German naturalists, and is even 

 positively contradicted for some species. Nevertheless, the similarity 

 is rather striking. The amber fauna, mostly consisting of articulata, 

 gives an analogous result. A fossil amber-genus of white ants, Ter- 

 mopsis of Professor Heer, is represented by a single living species in 

 North America; and of a very remarkable Psocid, also found in am- 

 ber, Amphientomum, a species was discovered not long ago by Dr. A. 

 S. Packard, Jr., in New England. 



It would be out of place to dwell more on these analogies here, 

 though many other facts are at hand. It may be that amber, which 

 also occurs in Greenland, will be discovered in the southern and 

 western parts of the United States. When I first saw the shores of 

 the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and the Island of Mackinaw, I was 

 so struck by their resemblance to the shores of my native country, 

 the very locality where amber is found, that I could not help thinking 

 that here also amber would be discovered.* 



I conclude by recommending to American geologists this interesting 

 geological question. The accidental circumstance of my birth in the, 

 as yet, richest amber country, convinced me of the advantages which 

 geologists may derive from a careful study of this singular mineral. 



Dr. Chas. Pickering remarked that in 1826 specimens of 

 amber, claimed to have been brought from the region of the 

 Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, were plenty in Philadelphia, 



Dr. S terry Hunt observed that the glauconite or green- 

 sand marl of New Jersey, and along our eastern coasts, is 

 generally of cretaceous age, as in Europe ; although glauco- 

 nite is by no means confined to that horizon, since he had 

 analyzed and described giauconites of Cambrian age, viz. : 

 from the Potsdam of the Mississippi Valley, and from the 



