198 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June 



larger lateral aperture of the Blastoidea, and the so-called pro- 

 boscis of the paleozoic Crinoids are all oro-anal in function, yet I 

 shall not maintain that view obstinately against good reason shown 

 to the contrary. 



ON THE GEOLOGY OF EASTERN NEW ENGLAND. 



By Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S. 



(Frovi a letter to Prof. James D. Dana, reprinted from the American Journal 

 of Science and Arts, Vol. L., July, 1870.) 



When, more than twenty years since, my attention was turned 

 to the geology of New England, there was no evidence of the 

 existence between the old gneisses of the Adirondacks and the 

 coal measures, of any other stratified rocks than those of the 

 Huronian series, and the New York system, from the Potsdam 

 formation, upward. It is true that Emmons had, before that 

 time maintained the presence, in western Vermont and Massa- 

 chusetts, of a system of fossiliferous sediments, lying unconform- 

 ably beneath the Potsdam, but the evidence up to this time 

 adduced with regard to these so-called Taconic rocks, has failed 

 to show that they include any strata more ancient than the 

 Potsdam, while most of them are certainly younger. The 

 researches of Sir William Logan, up to 1848, had led him to 

 refer to a period not older than the Lower Silurian the crys- 

 talline sediments of the Appalachian region of Canada, between 

 Lake Champlain and Quebec. These form a chain of hills, the 

 continuation of the Green Mountains, and were found by him to 

 be followed immediately, to the southeast, by more or less calca- 

 reous and somewhat altered strata, associated with Upper Silurian 

 fossils, and succeeded across the strike, near the sources of 

 the Connecticut River, by a series, several miles in breadth, of 

 micaceous schists and quartzose strata, occasionally containing 

 chiastolite, garnet and hornblende. These two series of rocks, 

 extending from the base of the Green Mountains to Canaan on 

 the Connecticut, it was suggested by Sir William Logan, in his 

 Report on the Geological Survey, 1847-1848, might be the 

 altered representatives of the rocks of Gaspe, including the 

 Lower Helderberg group, and the succeeding members of the 

 New York system to the top of the Chemung. I then as now 



