Lesley.] ^70 [March. 



column from bottom to top, yet this happens in such a manner as to 

 group some of them more abundantly, or in certain peculiar proportions 

 in the Lower, others in the Middle, and others iu the Upper portions 

 of it. 5. That, after all, however, these groups are not persistent, 

 but differ at different localities, and are as worthless as the specific 

 forms themselves for the identification of a single bed in more than 

 one place. — Is it possible that all this has been made out, or can be 

 made out, except in a country of horizontal coal-measures, well 

 opened for study, where the stratification can be established before- 

 hand, and the range of the fossils be doubtless ? 



In conclusion I would say, that the want of clearly defined and 

 applied names is a drawback to such a discussion. The discussion 

 is in fact initially one of names, viz., how far down the name Car- 

 boniferous must be carried ; what are the Lower coiil-raeasures, &e. 

 But in the end, it is a question of vital importance to the value of 

 the palaeontological imprimatur upon stratigraphical and structural 

 deductions from field work. Is the discovery of specific fornvs to 

 keep all our geological jiiveanx in a perpetual mirage -flicker ? Are 

 we never to know from day to day, whether we are at work in Devo- 

 nian or Carboniferous, in Trias, (Dyas,) or Lias ? Why not at once 

 obey the marriage law of the weaker sex, and give up our names for 

 our lord's ? Let geology forget the virgin nomenclature of her youth, 

 and rewrite her books with such titles for her chapters as these : 

 "The Spirifeferous Formation; The Lepidodendriferous Formation; 

 The Lower Thecodont ; The Middle Baculite ; The Upper Pterodac- 

 tylian Formations." Why has this not already been done ? Simply 

 because it cannot be done. No palaeontologist has yet been bold 

 enough even to propose it. Yet as I believe, the 25,000 feet of coal- 

 measures in the British Provinces, will be found to be one of the 

 many unconscious realizations of this idea, when no one can be 

 found to nominate it openly. The whole palaeozoic system at its 

 thickest place in Southeast Pennsylvania and Middle Virginia, is but 

 85,000 feet. It is not unreasonable then to sixjgest, if not to afiirra, 

 that the vast column of so-called coal-measures in Nova Scotia will 

 take in all that part of the palasozoic column which has furnished 

 coal, and that is from the top downwards nearly to the Upper Silu- 

 rian, as Plate II will show. 



