retain in the Miocene certain formations in the West, which from their fossil plants I should be inclined to regard as Eocene.[DX] [DV] Newberry, "Transactions of the New Fork Academy," February, 1886. [DW] "Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada," vol. ii. [DX] While these sheets were going through the press I received a very valuable report of Mr. Lester F. Ward upon the Laramie of the United States. I have merely had time to glance at this report, but can see that the views of the author agree closely with those above expressed. Two ferns occurring in these beds are remarkable as evidence of the persistence of species, and of the peculiarities of their ancient and modern distribution. _Onoclea sensibilis_, the very common sensitive fern of eastern America, is extremely abundant in the Laramie beds over a great area in the West. Mr. Starkie Gardner and Dr. Newberry have also shown that it is identical with the _Filicites Hebridicus_ of Forbes, from the early Eocene beds of the Island of Mull, in Scotland. Thus we have a species once common to Europe and America, but now restricted to the latter, and which has continued to exist over all the vast ages between the Cretaceous and the present day. In the Laramie beds I have found associated with this species another and more delicate fern, the modern _Davallia_ (_Stenloma_) _tenuifolia_, but this, unlike its companion, no longer occurs in America, but is found in the mountains of Asia. This is a curious illustration of the fact that frail and delicate plants may be more ancient than the mountains or plains on which they live. There are also some very interesting and curious facts in connection with the conifers of the Laramie. One of the most common of these is a _Thuja_ or arbor vitæ (the so-called "cedar" of Canada). The Laramie species has been named _T. interrupta_ by Newberry, but it approaches very closely in its foliage to _T. occidentalis_, of eastern Canada, while its fruit resembles that of the western species, _T. gigantea_. Still more remarkable are the Sequoias to which we have already referred, but which in the Laramie age seem to have been spread over nearly all North America. The fossil species are of two types, representing respectively the modern _S. gigantea_ and _S. sempervirens_, and their wood, as well as that of Thuja, is found in great abundance in the lignites, and also in the form of silicified trunks, and corresponds with that of the recent species. The Laramie contains also conifers of the genera _Glyptostrobus_, _Taxodium_, and _Taxus_; and the genus _Salisburia_ or gingko--so characteristic of the Jurassic and Cretaceous--is still represented in America as well as in Europe in the early Eocene.