Bulletin 3. The flora of the Raritan Formation, 1911 - State of New ...

t2 THE RARITAN FLORA.
_"Lignite_
Plastic Clay _Potters Clay.
[ Lignite.
The first fossil plant from the Raritan to receive scientific de
scription was the Podozamites, described by Conrad from file
banks of South River, in Ig_). Fossil plants had been described
and figured from Marthas Vineyard by Hitchcock as long ago
as I84I (Final Rept. Geol. of Mass., Vol. 2, I84I), and various
authors had mentioned vegetable remains in Maryland and Virginia
and other southern states.
These leaf impressions in the Raritan Clays early attracted
the attention of Professor Cook, and large collections were made.
Unfortunately, like the leaves in so many of the unlithified plant
beds of the Coastal Plain, those of the Raritan are usually represented
by a /note or less thick sheet of carbonaceous matter,
which, when dry, soon shrinks, cracking and weathering away
and leaving faint and ahnost worthless impressions behind. This
has always been an obstacle to their proper study, as it was in the
study of Professor Cook's collections which were submitted to
Lesquereux. Professor Lesquereux prepared a list of species,
which was published in the Clay Report of I878, but because of
this poorness of preservation, little reliance can be placed upon
his determinations. Several of these species have never since
been observed, and they are ignored altogether in the systematic
part of the present report.
The following is a list of Lesquereux's determinations:
Andromeda.
Araliopsis.
Cinnamomun_ Heerii Lx.
Daphnophyllum?
(Dryophyl[u_n.)
Glyptostrobus gracillimus Lx.l_Widdringtonltes
Reichii of this report.
Laurus sp.
Leaves of a pecuIiar new kind of fern.
Magnolia alternata Heer. I
Magnolia Capellinil Heer.
Myrica, or Lomatia.
NEW JERSEY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
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