Preliminary Account of the New Albany Shale Flora

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary statement bearing on the flora of the New Albany shale, its age, and its affinities. The list of plants shows that the flora is large for such an early one. It is interesting, therefore, both to the stratigrapher and to the botanist. On the one hand, it furnishes information regarding the age of the New Albany shale and in particular the upper portion of it, which has been discussed for many years; on the other hand, it supplies new data bearing on the morphological variations of these old plants.