OF NORTH AMERICA. 
S9 
led me to consider these strata as the equiA^alent of the Neocomian group of Europe. This species was 
obtained from the hills surrounding Comet creek, one of the affluents of the False Washita river 
(Longitude 99°, latitude 35°, 50'.); on the banks of the Canadian; at Fort Washita; in the plain of 
Kiameska, Arkansas; at the fall of the Vert-de-Gris river, affluent of the Arkansas; near Preston; 
in the vicinity of New Braunfeld; and at Wacco camp on the Rio Guadalupe, Texas. I do not 
know that this species has been found except in the Far West of the United States. The learned 
Leopold de Buch thought he recognized the Gryphwa Pitcheri in some specimens of Gryphwae sent 
from Chili by Domeyko , and figured and described by Bayle and Coquand under the names of Gry- 
phwa cymbium and Ostrea Rivoti ( See : M^moire sur les fossiles secondaires recueillis dans le Chili par /. 
Domeyko, page 13 and 24; pi. I, fig. 7, 8; and pi. V, fig. 6, 7; in Mdm. de la Soc. GM. de France; 
tome IV. Paris, 1851.). He also thought that probably the Gryphwan. sp.? plate V, fig. 8, 9 of 
Copiapo , Chili (See : Geological observations on South America , page 266 , by Charles Darwin ; London, 
1851.), was the Gryphwa Pitcheri; and that the Gryphcea Darwinii of Forbes in the same work, pi. V, 
fig. 7 , is identical with the Gryphcea imbricata Krauss (See : fiber einige Petrefacten aus der untern Kreide 
des Kaplandes , pi. 50; fig. 2 a, 2 b, 2 c, 2d.). Sustained by these determinations, the illustrious 
geologist of Berlin denied the existence of the Jurassic rocks, not only in South America, but in 
the whole southern hemisphere, in his last publication (See: fiber die Juraformatim auf der Erdfldche: 
in Bericht iiber die Verhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, pag. 662. 1852.). 
De Buch goes farther in the same work and denies the existence of the Jurassic rocks in the whole 
of North America with the exception of the village of Katmaiskoi in the gulf of Katrnai , Russian 
America, where they have been found by the naturalist Wosnessenky of St. Petersburg. 
I have before my eyes, at this moment, specimens coming from Chili and the Cape of Good 
Hope, as well as all the figures of Gryphcew, Exogyrce and published by Darwin, d’Orbigny, 
Bayle, Krauss, Forbes and Sharpe, and I confess that notwithstanding my best efforts, I cannot 
identify any one of them with the Gryphcea Pitcheri, they are all of entirely distinct species, and 
are more nearly related in form to the Jurassic Gryphwce than to the Cretaceous. The Ostrea cym- 
bimn of Bayle (See; Mdmoire etc., p. 13; pi. IV; fig. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; pi. V; fig. 6, 7.) re- 
sembles much more the Gryphcea dilatata than the G. cymbium, and the figures 1, 2 and 4 of Bayle 
are exactly like several specimens of G. dilatata, that I have found in the Argovian of Salins. So 
that this G. cymbium, or Ostrea hemispherica , as d’Orbigny calls it (See; PaUonlotogie du Voyage dans 
[Amdrique Mdridionale, p. 106; pi. XXII; fig. 3, 4; Paris, 1842.), of Mauflas and Tres Cruces in 
the vicinity of Coquimbo , Chili , appears to me identical or at most a variety of the Oxfordian Gry- 
phcea dilatata of the Jura. The Gryphcea Darwinii Forbes is not at all the same, as Bayle thinks, 
with his G. cymbium, and I agree with Leopold de Buch in identifying it with the Gryphcea imbri- 
cata of Krauss. I have specimens of the G. imbricata found at Utenage by Krauss, which do not 
differ at all from fig. 7, pi. V, of the G. Darwinii of Forbes. The researches and surveys of my 
friend, Dr. Ferdinand Krauss of Stuttgart, have ted him to regard the secondary strata of Algoa 
bay between Port Natal and Cape Town as of the Cretaceous epoch, and von Buch was perfectly 
justified in saying in 1852 that « for a long time the formations of this bay had been recognized 
as Cretaceous » (See; t'ber die Juraformation auf der Erdfldche, pag. 680.). But later and fuller ob- 
servations upon the colony of the cape of Good Hope , made by Andrew G. Bain and recently pub- 
