480 THE CANADIA [Vol. VI. 



moreover the slates, the rocks of the, mountain, were the typical 

 beds, and not the quartzite. Hence, if there are any Taconic 

 schists or slates, those of the Taconic J range are the rocks entitled 

 to bear the name, being Taconic geographically, and Taconic by 

 the earliest authoritative use. Prof. Emmons the authority. 



Prof Emmons, in his Agricultural Report, subsequently pub- 

 lished (in 1843), announced the Primordial beds of Bald Mt. 

 (near Canaan Four Corners, in Columbia Co. N. Y.), as Taconic 

 also ; but this did not make them so. He referred to the Taconic 

 the Black slates of northern Vermont, since shown to contain 

 primordial fossils ; he searched the country north and south for 

 other Taconic rocks, and found them as he thought ; and he set 

 others on the search, not only in this country, but over the world. 

 But all this has not changed the fact that the true Taconic beds, 

 if any are such, are those he first so announced ; and that the 

 rest, so far as they are of different age from these, younger or 

 older, have been dragged into the association without reason. 

 The Taconic rocks of Berkshire and of the counties of New York 

 just west, always bore the most prominent part in his later de- 

 scriptions of the Taconic system. 



The error on the part of Prof. Emmons, in referring beds of 

 other ages to the Taconic system, is not surprising, considering 

 the difficulties in the case. But it was no less an error ; and 

 his name as a backer cannot make the wrong right. 



Geoloo-ists now reo-ard the slates of Taconic Mt. and the lime- 

 stone, also, as of Lower Silurian age, but later than the Potsdam 

 sandstone. Logan refers them to the Quebec group. Whatever 

 the period of the slates, or slates and associated limestones, to 

 that period properly pertains the term 7"^^ co?hV. — Amer. Naturalist. 



Massachusetts, and their continuation westward into New York. 

 These are the typical roclvs on which the system was founded. On 

 plate xi. four figures representing sections across this particular re- 

 gion are given. The only Vermont observations are contained in the 

 only other section on the same plate representing a section from Lake 

 Champlain to Richmond, Vt., through Charlotte. No descriptiou of 

 the rocks of this section is to be found in the text of the volume. 



f In figure 4 of plate xi. (referred to in the preceding note) repre- 

 senting a section through Graylock, the " Taconic slate" stops just 

 west of Berlin, Rensselaer County, New York, the slates on the west 

 being put down as « Hudson River shales," and in figs. 2 and 3, the 

 boundary is near Petersburg, north of Berlin. The extension of the 

 Taconic to the rfudson River appears first in Prof. Emmons' Agricul- 

 tural Report, published in 1843. 



