(32 GEOLOGY OF SW. IDAHO AND SE. OEEGON. [bull. 217. 
An interesting fact in connection with the stratified beds briefly 
described above is that they contain the bones of animals which are 
now extinct, but which lived in large numbers in and about the 
ancient lakes in which the sand, clay, volcanic dust, and other rocks 
now exposed and eroded into hills and valleys were deposited. In 
these same beds, but most abundant in the thinly laminated white 
silts and sheets of fine volcanic dust, occur fossil leaves, frequently 
in great abundance, and less commonly the fruits of the plants to 
which they belonged. These plant remains differ from the vegeta- 
tion living on the earth to-day, and reveal the nature of the luxuriant 
forests that flourished in the now arid portions of the far West dur- 
ing the Tertiary period of geological history. The fossil bones and 
impressions of leaves and fruits referred to are of great scientific 
interest, as they furnish evidence in reference to past climatic changes 
and the gradual evolution of life on the earth, and also enable geolo- 
gists to determine the relative age of the beds in which they occur. 
Small collections of beautifully preserved fossil leaves were obtained 
from beds of fine white silt near Beulah, in the northwestern portion of 
Malheur County, Oreg., and from well-exposed and in part indurated 
sediments of Lake Payette, on Succor Creek, in Oregon, about 2 miles 
west of Rockhill, in Idaho. These specimens have been studied by 
F. H. Knowlton, paleobotanist of the U. S. Geological Survey, from 
whose manuscript report the following facts and interpretations of 
their meaning have been taken: 
"The fossil plants collected contain, in addition to several species 
not as yet described, examples of broad-leaved trees, such as the oak 
(Quercus), of which there are several species, maple (Acer), plane 
tree or button wood (Platanus), willow (Salix), together with repre- 
sentatives of the bearberry (Barberis), wax-myrtle (Myrica), senna 
(Cassia), and others. The genera of plants represented are nearly all 
still living in America, but the species and varieties differ almost 
wholly from their modern descendants. The genera named above, as 
will at once be recognized by the inhabitants of the arid portions of 
Idaho and Oregon, are not now characteristic of that region. The 
leaves discovered in the rocks indicate that the trees and plants on 
which they grew required a more humid and in general less changea- 
ble climate than now prevails where their fossil remains are entombed. 
The nearest analogy of the flora they represent is seemingly furnished 
by the varied and beautiful vegetation of the Lower Mississippi Valley. 
Among the most conspicuous of the leaves spread out in the fine- 
grained lacustral sediments, in which they have been preserved for 
countless years, as if in the presses of an herbarium, are broad, 
strongly-veined, deeply-lobed leaves of an ancient maple, and in asso- 
ciation with them are finely preserved winged seeds belonging to the 
same genus and possibly the same species. Several species of oak, 
etc., show that the uplands were clothed with hardwood trees, inter- 
