No. 3.] BILLINGS— ON THE TACONIC CONfROVERSY. Sit 



Dr. Hunt, in his address, has omitted to make any allusion to my 

 determination of the primordial character of this trilobite in the 

 spring of 1869, or to the investigation which took place in conse- 

 quence thereof. On the contrary he gives his readers to under- 

 stand, as will be seen by a quotation further on, that this impor- 

 tant point was first determined by Barrande in 1860. One whole 

 year, during which the Canadian Survey was engaged in the 

 investiiration, is thus left out of his address. 



The circumstances which led to Barrande's giving an opinion 

 are the following. In the latter part of 1859, Prof. Hall des- 

 cribed three species of trilobites from the Vermont locality, 

 includins: the form I had received from Col. Jewett. He made 

 no allusion to their primordial characters, but referred them, 

 wrongly, to Oleniis, a genus whose horizon he supposed to 

 be at the summit of the Lower Silurian. He referred the rocks 

 in which they had been found to the upper part of the Hudson 

 River group. This is the position he had always assigned to the 

 Taconic rocks of New-York. The Canadian Survey had long 

 before adopted his opinion ; and indeed before the discovery of 

 these trilobites no good reasons had been given to prove that it 

 was not correct. Dr. Emmon's views, although they turned out 

 to be, in part, well founded, had never been supported by good 

 clear evidence. 



Previously to the month of April, 1860, 1 believe that the only 

 palaeontologists who had studied these trilobites, were Prof. Hall 

 and myself. He considered them to belong to the summit of the 

 Lower Silurian, while 1 maintained that they were primordial, 

 and that the rocks in which they had been found, were cither at 

 the base of the Lower Silurian or perhaps below that horizon. 



On the 25th of April, 1860, just one year after I had received 

 the trilobite from Col. Jewett, I sent a copy of Prof. Hall's pam- 

 phlet, containing the figures and descriptions, to Barrande, then in 

 Paris. He had previously written me several times requesting 

 me to furnish him with any facts, within my knowledge, that 

 might have a bearing upon his theor}' of Colonies. I referred him 

 to these three trilobites, as an example of a group of primordial 

 fossils, in rocks which were considered by American geologists to 

 be of the age of the Hudson Kiver formation. On the 28th of 

 May he wrote me, acknowledging the receipt of the pamphlet and 

 of my letter. He agreed with me that the trilobites were pri- 

 mordial forms, and expressed his doubts that the rocks in which 



