52 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



land surface nearer than the far distant shores of the Con- 

 tinent. This we are able to locate in the Silurian areas of 

 Southern Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. In the first volume of 

 the Report of the Geological Survey of Ohio, I have shown, as it 

 seems to me by incontestable evidence, that these areas were 

 islands in the Devonian sea, and as at Delaware and Sandusky a 

 considerable number of fragments of land plants have been found 

 in the Corniferous limestone, we are justified in supposing that our 

 tree-ferns grew upon this land, and that its hills and valleys were 

 adorned with a land flora perhaps as luxuriant and beautiful as 

 any that has grown on the earth's surface since. The chances of 

 any considerable portion of this flora being preserved, or at least 

 discovered in the sediments of the adjacent sea, would seem to be 

 quite small. These plants were doubtless uprooted by some river 

 flood, or torn from the shore cliffs and hurled into the sea by the 

 force of the wind, and tossed about on the waves until, becoming 

 water-logged, they sank to the bottom. It is hardly possible that 

 any considerable portion of the flora of the land from whence these 

 specimens came, could have been preserved in this way, and we 

 may safely infer, that with the larger arborescent forms there were 

 many smaller and more delicate plants of which no traces now 

 exist. We may also infer that since so many specimens of the 

 vegetation of the Cincinnati island have been obtained at this 

 early date, future years, in which the Corniferous limestone will 

 be more extensively quarried, will add largely to our knowledge 

 of this, so far as yet known, the earliest American terrestrial flora. 



Caulopteris peregrina, Newb. 

 Plate V., Figs, i, 2. 



Trunk ten feet or more in length and at least six inches in diameter, 

 external surface marked with a series of leaf scars, spirally arranged 

 and separated longitudinally and vertically by distances generally 

 less than their diameter. Interiorly the trunk is mainly composed 

 of a matted mass of aerial roots. 



The only specimens I have of this interesting plant, are too much 

 worn and macerated, to show in perfection the character of the 

 external markings. The leaf scars are rounded or transversely 

 elliptical, and seem to have had much the character of those of 

 Protopieris, as illustrated in the typical species P. Stembergii, Corda 

 (Beitrage, p. 77, Tab. XLVIII., fig. 1). Whether the central figure 



