Hides and Mittrules in Classijicotion. — Jfarcou. 121 
London, where the Tertiary strata lie in retrogressive strati- 
fication on the White Chalk. 
The palseontologic characteristic of the Laramee formation 
is an absence of marine animals, unfossiliferous strata in 
comparatively large districts, and the appearance, now and 
then, of fossil remains of brackish water mollusca forms, ter- 
restrial vertebrates and leaves of plants, as well as fossil 
woods. The invertebrate fauna is similar and correlated to a 
fauna found in the Lower Eocene of the Adriatic province of 
Austria. The vertebrate fauna is identical, for the mamma- 
lia, with the Cernaysian fauna of the Lower Eocene of A}' and 
Cernay, near Reims, in the celebrated Champagne district of 
the Tertiary Paris basin. Finally, the flora contains so many 
new types entirely Tertiary that to call it a Cretaceous flora 
would be an entirely unnecessary confusion, created against 
all sound principles of palseoutology. 
The correlation of the faunas of the Laramee formation 
with the faunas of the Lower Eocene of Europe is most per- 
fect, and requires no more discussion after the excellent and 
most important memoirs of M. Lemoine (Bull. Soc. (leol. 
France^ 3d series, vol. xx and xxi, Paris). Professors Zittel 
of Munich and Gaudry of Paris, after a study and compari- 
son, are convinced and do not place any longer the Laramee 
formation in the Cretaceous, but in the Tertiary. As to the 
Puercos formation, considered by professor Edw. D. Cope as 
older than the Laramee formation, it is only a subdivision of 
the Laramee just below the group of strata in which was found 
the celebrated mammalian fauna wrongly called by Messrs. 
Marsh and Cope "a mammalian Cretaceous fauna." 
So now there is not a single doubt left about the age of the 
Laramee formation, and it is to be hoped that the United 
States Geological Survey and the U. S. National Museum will 
conform their classification to the rules used everywhere in 
stratigraphical geology on that simple question of correlation 
and classification of a mass of strata of fresh and brackish 
water origin placed between the Chalk and the Oligocene in 
America, just as it is placed in Europe. 
The Chico-Tejon Formation. 
The last great confusion, created in stratigraphic classifi- 
cation in North America by an erroneous use of palaeontology. 
