148 The America}! Geologist. March. 1904. 
appears for taking exception to their correlation, which is generally ac- 
cepted. This was clearly indicated in my 'Table of North American 
Tertiary Horizons,' where I state of the Eocene: 'In a wide sense it 
includes both Eocene and Oligocene of the present table, the two not 
being separated by essential stratigraphic breaks in the Gulf column or 
by changes in the climatic relations of the favma/* 
"In Europe the Oligocene series followed the uplifts above referred 
to, and the changes which resulted in the elevation of the Alps brought 
it to a close. Its beginnings were marked by the encroachments of the 
sea upon the land, forming gulfs or lagoons deeply intersecting the con- 
tinental region, and even, towards the middle of the epoch, reducing the 
dry land of middle and western Europe to an irregular group of large 
islands, while Italy, Southern Russia, and North Germany were com- 
pletely submerged. 
"Paleontologically the consequence of these changes — which were 
accompanied by a uniform and mild climate even into the Arctic regions 
— was the great extension of brackish water deposits, lake beds, ligniti- 
ferous and leaf-bearing strata, while the purely marine sediments were 
largely peripheral. 
"In North America, in the coastal region the series which we have 
referred to the Oligocene was similarly marked by wide extension 
of brackish water sediments about the Mississippi embayment, more or 
less lignitiferous, with peripheral marine sediments. On the northwest 
coast a large proportion of the lignite beds are probably referable to 
this epoch. Until recently distinctive marine Eocene was unknown north 
of Puget Sound. During the Harriman expedition to Alaska, however, 
Dr. Palache was fortvmate enough to discover much distorted uplifted 
and broken marine sediments with a fauna which, though small and 
badly preserved, I was able to recognize as typically Eocene. This oc- 
curred on the Alaskan peninsula, and these rocks are certainly below the 
nearly horizontal unmetamorphosed sediments of the Kenai formation 
which contain most of the Alaskan lignite beds. The latter pass slowly 
and without perceptible break or unconformity into marine shallow 
water conglomerates and shales carrying a typical marine Miocene inver- 
tebrate fauna. These lignite and leaf beds were referred to the Miocene 
by Heer, but Starkie, Gardner and others have shown that they are 
Eogene. I have described a similar fauna and succession from the 
nortlieastern part of the Okhotsk Sea.f 
■'Since the condition of the true Eocene sediments indicates great 
physical changes here before the deposition of the Kenai beds, and since 
a reasonable proportion of Miocene forms occur in the plants derived 
* Eighteenth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geo/. -Srrrrer. 1896-7. part ii, p. 332, 1 898. 
This, as well as the tact that "Eocene" in the United States Geological Survey 
nomenclature is the eciuivalent of "Eogene" of European geologists, seems to 
have been overlooked by Miss Maury in her thesis on the Oligocene (p. 89"> 
when she states that I use the term Oligocene as coordinate with "Eocene" 
and "Miocene." 
+ Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, vol. xvi. No. 94.6, p. +71-478. 1893. In this 
paper, as in other publications of the time, the term Miocene had not yet been 
discarded. 
