Triassic Flora of Richmond. — Marcou. 169 
series of strata forming the coal field are four or five thousand 
feet thick ; that is to say, a formation of the first order or 
system, with fossil plants and fossil animals scattered at 
different elevations, belonging to forms which in Europe 
range from the Dyas to the Rhaetic. Such a narrow inter- 
pretation of palseophytology, according to proportion of a few 
species — even not very reliable as to their exact determina- 
tion and affinity — if accepted in classification will nullify 
practical geology and stratigraphic researches. For, then, our 
table of classification and nomenclature will have to depend 
only on the present status of a certain class of paleontologists, 
and of fossil-finders in some places, only imperfectly explored. 
Twenty-five feet of a standard typical sub-group of western 
Europe can not be extended into five thousand feet in another 
part of the world, with the suppression at the same time of all 
the rest of the system in which the small sub-group of twenty- 
five feet is enclosed. For such is the true meaning of profes- 
sor Fontaine's classification in referring the five thousand feet 
of all the older Mesozoic strata of Virginia and North Carolina 
to the Rha3tic only, and not to the whole Trias. With such 
principles comparative stratigraphy between Europe and 
other parts of the world will be absolutely useless. In fact it 
will be the abandonment of all the rules used in geology, and 
with which that science has been built up from the days of 
Werner, Smith, Brongniart,tothose of Berrande and Emmons. 
In his monograph professor Fontaine has given almost 
verbatim the descriptions of Emmons' coal plants of North 
Carolina, from page 97 to page 128; reproducing also all 
Emmons' figures, copied from AtnericaJi geology, Fart vi. 
He accepts forty species of Emmons and concludes, even with 
more force than for Virginia, that the flora of North Carolina 
"can not be older than Rhatic;" adding: "We are then, I 
think, entitled to consider that the older Mesozoic flora of 
North Carolina and Virginia is most probably Rhtetic in age, 
and certainly not older. Some authors hold that the Rhatic 
beds form the uppermost of the Triassic strata. Others think 
that they are transition beds, having more affinity with the 
Lower Lias. The latter view will, I think, be justified by a 
study of the flora, and I have, in this memoir, assumed its 
correctness. {Loc. cit. p. 128.) 
It is simply an attempt to return, as far as it is possible to 
