The Cretaceous Flora of America

Abstract

NEAR the close of his very interesting lecture “On the Tropical Forests of Hampshire,” published in NATURE (vol. xv. pp. 229, 258, 279) Mr. J. S. Gardner says:—“I have great doubts, however, as to the correct position of many of the foreign so-called cretaceous beds. Those of America, from which most of the list of dicotyledons of this period is derived, appear to me, from the character of their fauna, to be rather lower eocene, or at most, filling in the gap between our chalk and London clay. Most of the shells have a marvellously eocene-like aspect, and I take it that the presence of an ammonite, and some few other forms of shells which in England do not reach above the chalk, should not be taken as conclusive evidence of the antiquity of the bed, as, although migrated from our seas, they may very well have lived on in other regions. It is inconsistent to assume that no ammonite lived on in any part of the world to a more recent period than that of our chalk.”