Geological researches in China, Mongolia, and Japan, during the years 1862-1865.

APPENDIX.
APPENDIX No. 1.
Description of Fossil Plants from the Chinese Coal-Bearing Rocks.
BY J. S. NEWBERRY, M. D.
CLEVELAND, OHIO, September 25th, 1865.
RAPHAEL PUMPELLY, Esq.
Dear Sir: The fossil plants you were kind enough to submit to me for examination, though few in
number and somewhat fragmentary, have proved to be of very special interest, since they supply the
necessary data for determining, approximately, the age of the strata from which they were taken;
and rather unexpectedly prove a large part of the great coal fields of China to be of Mesozoic age.
This conclusion is based on the entire absence of Carboniferous plants from the collection; and the
presence of well-marked Cycads-species of Podozamites and Pterozamites, closely allied to, if not
identical with, some heretofore found in Europe and America.
I give below, such descriptions of the several species contained in the collection, as could be framed
from the somewhat meagre material submitted to me. Future observations, made upon a larger
number of more perfect specimens, will be necessary before questions of specific identity or difference
can be definitively settled-but it is scarcely probable that any facts, or specimens hereafter to be
obtained, will require, modification of the view-that the coal basins which you visited are all Mesozoic and not Carboniferous.
We have, of course, no right to assume from the interesting facts your explorations have brought
to light, that no Carboniferous coal exists in China, for it may very well happen, that as in our own
country, coal seams of economical value, but of different ages, will be found there, at points not greatly
removed from each other. But geologists will not fail to be deeply interested in the fact that so large
portions of the coal basins of China, including beds of both anthracite and bituminous coal-worked
for hundreds of years, probably the oldest coal mines in the world-are wholly excluded from the
Carboniferous formation. So large is this coal-bearing area, indeed, that when joined to the Triassic,
Cretaceous, and Tertiary coals of North America, they quite overshadow the Carboniferous coals of
Europe and the Mississippi valley, and suggest the question, whether the name given to the formation
which includes the most important European strata, has not been somewhat hastily chosen.
Another interesting feature in the fossil plants under consideration is the reappearance, at the far
distant points from whence they come, of genera so well known in European and American geology
-and the entire absence of the species of Phylotheca, Glossopteris, etc.-which have made the Indian
and Australian coal floras so puzzling to the paleontologist. There are fragments of a new generic
plants new to science, but the Pecopteris, Sphenopteris, Podozamites, Pterozamites, &c., have a very
familiar look; and in their resemblance to well known forms, give fresh evidence of the monotony of
the vegetation of the globe, previous to the introduction of the angiospermous forests of the Cretaceous epoch.
Whether the strata which have furnished these plants should be considered Triassic or Jurassic,
remains to be determined by future observations, as the fossils as yet obtained can hardly be considered
sufficient for the solution of that question.
From the " Kwei basin" we have numerous pinna of a species of Podozamites, undistinguishable
from one found by Prof. Emmons in North Carolina, in strata now generally regarded as Triassic;
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