No. 3.] AMERICAN ASSOCIATION. 157 



imagination can distino-uish the picture of a wild boar with a 

 spear in his side, with the Greek letter I£ most clearly cut by 

 the side of it. No one would dream of attributing all the marks 

 upon the rocks to design, and he thought it equally unreasonable 

 to so attribute the similar marks upon the bone to human agency. 

 The author reports, therefore, in view of the facts mentioned 

 above as to the flints, the split bones, and the marks upon the 

 fossil bone, that they believe that Mr. Calvert and Sir John 

 Lubbock (who had never seen the specimens) are mistaken in 

 the conclusions to which they have come, and that they have not 

 been able to find any evidence whatever at the Dardanelles in 

 reference to the antiquity of man. 



•iON THE RELATIONS OF THE NIAGARA AND LOWER HELDER- 

 BERG GROUPS OF ROCKS AND THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL DIS- 

 TRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 



By Prof. Jamks Hall. 



The speaker, before proceeding to the discussion of the sub- 

 ject, cited a paper read by Mr. A. H. Worthen at the Troy 

 meeting of the Association, entitled, ''Remarks on the relative 

 age of the Niagara and the so-called Lower Helderberg Groups," 

 in which that writer proposed to drop the name of the latter 

 group on the ground of its equivalence with the Niagara. The 

 results of careful field investigation, and the study of the fossils 

 over wide areas for 30 years, it undertakes to set aside, without 

 offering the evidence of any new investigations, or of arguments 

 which could be admitted as proof. Coming from a gentleman 

 holding the position of State Geologist of Illinois, the matter was 

 worthy of the careful attention of the Association. The speaker 

 stated that this view was not original with Mr. Worthen, but 

 was the prevalent opinion among geologists previous to the last 

 30 years, citing Prof H. D. Rogers and other authors, gi vino- 

 some details in regard to the causes of the misunderstandinir of 

 the geological structure of the country. Here, upon a map of 

 i.he United States, the colored belts which indicated the forma- 

 ^tioQS referred to, he first traced the Niagara group from its 

 •typical locality at Niagara Falls, where the formation of shale 

 .a©d limestone has a thickness of over 200 feet, to the eastern 

 portion of the State, where from gradual thinning it sometimes 

 ■.has a thickness of not more than 8 feet, and is known as the 



