The Lance Creek Beds, Wyoming. — Hatcher. ?,7S 
the former, it appears, has been definitely proven to be beneath 
the Fort Pierre and above the Benton, while that of the Con- 
verse county Laramie has been just as certainly shown to be 
above the Fox Hills and below the Fort Union. These are 
facts which cannot be ignored or set aside, and if they are not 
found to coincide with the previously formulated ideas of pale- 
ontologists, the error would seem to lie with the latter and not 
with the stratigraphy. In all such cases the sooner the paleon- 
tologist brings his theories into harmon_^^ with the facts of 
stratigraphy the better, for no amount of speculative correla- 
tion no matter how complete the material upon which it is 
based, and in this case the material is extremely fragmentary 
and unreliable, can upset exact stratigraphical determinations. 
Osborn and Lambe have shown conclusively that the fauna of 
the Belly River beds at least is decidedly more primitive than 
that of the Converse County beds of Wyoming, thus showing 
that the paleontological and stratigraphical evidences are in 
accord. They have also practically demonstrated what the 
present writer had for some years maintained, namely, that a 
portion of the Judith River beds at least are also older than 
the Wyoming beds. Their work, together with that of Doug- 
lass in central Montana, has furnished us with a key to the 
solution of the problem relating to the Laramie and earlier 
fresh- and brackish-water deposits of the Cretaceous of the 
west. Let us hope that in the not too distant future we may 
be able to fix with equal certainty the upper and lower limits 
of the Judith River beds, or perhaps differentiate them into two 
or more horizons such as it does not now seem impossible that 
they may contain, and definitely fix the limits and age of each. 
Carnegie Mnseum, Pittsburg, Pa., 
December 15, 1902. 
