LATER CRETACEOUS AND KAINOZOIC. 



209 



studied both in the United States* and Canada; and, 

 though their flora was originally referred by mistake to 

 the Miocene, it is now known to be Eocene or Palseocene, 

 or even in part a transition group between the latter and 

 the Cretaceous. The following remarks, taken chiefly 

 from recent papers by the author, f will serve to illustrate 

 this : 



On the geological map of Canada the Laramie series, 

 formerly known as the lignitic or lignite Tertiary, oc- 

 curs, with the exception of a few outliers, in two large 

 areas west of the 100th meridian, and separated from each 

 other by a tract of older Cretaceous rocks, over which the 

 Laramie beds may have extended, before the later denuda- 

 tion of the region. 



The most eastern of these areas, that of the Souris 

 Eiver and Wood Mountain, extends for some distance 

 along the United States boundary, between the 102d and 

 109th meridians, and reaches northward to about thirty 

 miles south of the "elbow" of the South Saskatchewan 

 Eiver, which is on the parallel of 51° north. In this 

 area the lowest beds of the Laramie are seen to rest on 

 those of the Fox Hill group of the Upper Cretaceous, 

 and at one point on the west they are overlaid by beds of 

 Miocene Tertiary age, observed by Mr. McConnell, of 

 the Geological Survey, in the Cypress Hills, and referred 

 by Cope, on the evidence of mammalian remains, to the 

 White Kiver division of the United States geologists, 

 which is regarded by them as Lower Miocene. J The age 

 of the Laramie beds is thus stratigraphically determined 

 to be between the Fox Hill Cretaceous and the Lower 



* See more especially the elaborate and valuable reports by Lesque- 

 reux and Newberry, and a recent memoir by Ward on " Types of the 

 Laramie Flora," " Bulletins of the United States Geological Survey," 

 1887. 



f " Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada," 1886-'87. 

 X " Report of the Geological Survey of Canada," 1885. 



