342 The American Geologist. 
December, 1903. 
sene, come for the most part from shales that are less black 
and more sandy, as is the Chemung of that state. 
VIII. THE PALAEOBOTANY OF DEVONIAN 
APPALACHIA. 
Very few lines will suffice to sum up the knowledge of the 
paleobotany of Appalachia in the Devonian era. 
The Oriskany has nowhere yielded any traces of fossil 
plants. 
From the Corniferous, we as yet know only a few forms. 
Two were reported by Newberry* from the Corniferous-Ham- 
ilton group at Delaware. They are the trunks of two species 
of tree ferns which were previously described by him as Caul- 
opteris antiqua and C. percgrina.i A lepidodendrid stem com- 
pletes the scanty list. This was said to most nearly resemble 
L. gaspiaiutm. 
The occurrence of these fossils in the place where they were 
found vyas urged by Dr. Newberry as a strong reason for be- 
lieving that the island of Cincinnati was at the time above 
the sea-level ; for he considered it in a very high degree im- 
probable that such vegetable remains should have been drifted 
together from the shore of the Appalachian sea 500 miles dis- 
: tant. The argument has lost none of its cogency since his day 
In the overlying Huron Black shale are frequently found 
logs of silicified wood and many of its beds abound with the 
little fossil named by Sir. Win. Dawson, Sporangites hitron- 
.ensis. The latter is sometimes so abundant as to give the 
black surface of the shale a resinous yellow tinge. If the re- 
mains are really the spores of terrestrial rhizocarps these must 
have been excessively abundant on some adjoining land. If 
they were marine, the sea must have been, as Dr. Newberry 
suggested, a veritable Sargasso, In either case the plants must 
have been remarkably fragile ; for no specimen of either stem 
or leaf, with one or two doubtful exceptions, has yet been dis- 
covered. 
The second kind of vegetable fossil that is found in the 
shale, — the woody trunks,- — has been named Dadoxylon. Mi- 
croscopic examination of the structure has led to the opinion 
. * Geology of Ohio, vol. i, 1873, pp. 106-146. 
t Quart. Jour, of the Geol. Soc. of Lond., 1871, p. 272. 
