1908] 
Britcs, a New Fossil Grass. 
neath the lowest flowering glume. The latter is not well pre- 
served at the tip, but the second is visible for its entire length. It 
is lo mm. long and about 2 mm. wide, broadly lanceolate in out- 
line, with acutely pointed but unawned apex. Between the second 
and third flowering glumes can be seen the apex of the second 
empty glume. The spikelet thus appears to be three flowered, 
which also appears to be true of the second one, which shows three 
flowering glumes in a position symmetrical to those of the first 
and bears an empty glume partly hidden in the shale in almost 
the same position as the upper empty glume of the first spikelet. 
The lower empty glume of this spikelet probably lies beneath the 
first flowering glume in the shale. 
Described from one specimen collected at Florissant, Colo- 
rado by Prof. T. D. A. Cockerell in the Miocene shales at station 
14. ^ . 
The present species appears to belong quite properly to Melica 
with which it agrees in all essential particulars. The secund 
insertion of the two spikelets as shown in the type, their large 
size and the form of the glumes, and the apparently very short 
joints of the rachilla seem to determine its location here with but 
little doubt. A superficially similar arrangement of the spike- 
lets occurs in certain Hordeae, but other characters exclude it 
from a place in this trible. 
THE GENERIC NAME ROOSEVELTIA. 
I find that Roosez eltia proposed by me for a genus of Attidw 
from Borneo, Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sciences, Arts and Letters, 
Vol. XV, pt. II, p. 164 ( 1907) is preoccupied in Jordan and Scale's 
Fishes of Samoa, Dept. Comm. Tab. Bur. Fish., No. 25 (1906). 
I propose in its place Ogdenia after Dr. H. V. Ogden of Mil- 
waukee. 
Geo. W. Peckham. 
