C GENERAL SUMMARY OF SCIENTIFIC AND 



considered by Smith as belonging to the White Mountain 

 series, which alternate with belts of Huronian to the east- 

 ward. In one locality the schists are associated with a hy- 

 persthenic labradorite rock supposed to be Norian. The 

 unaltered paleozoic strata along the western border are de- 

 scribed as dipping toward and apparently passing beneath 

 the adjacent crystalline rocks, a phenomenon well known 

 throughout the Appalachian valley, and due to dislocations 

 in the strata. 



The extension of this western belt of crystalline rocks into 

 North Carolina is also by Professor Kerr referred to the 

 Huronian, in which he includes all of the rocks in that 

 state described by Emmons as Taconic. There are good 

 reasons for regarding the lower portions of his Taconic sys- 

 tem as Eozoic. In his recent geological map of North Caro- 

 lina, Professor Kerr groups the crystalline rocks of the state 

 under the three heads of Granites, Huronian, and Lauren- 

 tian. Some portions of the latter area examined by the 

 writer have, however, been by him referred to the Mont- 

 alban or White Mountain series. Bradley has lately en- 

 deavored to show that the whole of these crystalline strata 

 in North Carolina and East Tennessee are the lower paleo- 

 zoic rocks, including the Cincinnati group, in an altered 

 condition, thus resuscitating the old views of Rogers, com- 

 bated more than thirty years ago by Emmons, and since 

 by Hunt and others. Bradley offers in support of this 

 view only conjectures based on supposed lithological paral- 

 lelisms, which, when we consider the great mineralogical 

 and physical differences, and the entire absence of organic 

 remains in the rocks in question, have very little weight. 

 The alteration and the uplifting of these crystalline strata 

 of the Blue Ridge are by Bradley supposed to be post-Car- 

 boniferous, which does not agree with the observations of 

 Fontaine and others, whose observations show these crys- 

 talline rocks to have formed the southeastern barrier of the 

 paleozoic sea. 



Fontaine describes the Blue Rid^e in Virginia as having 

 an axis of coarse granitic and syenitic gneiss, referred by 

 him to the Laurentian series, which is seen near Lynch- 

 burg and in the Peaks of Otter, where these gneisses are 

 penetrated by intrusive syenites, and is developed in greater 



