AND THE REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF VERMONT. 107 



All this shows how hard the struggle has been. After Dr. Emmons, who bravely sus- 

 tained the opposition almost single-handed during eighteen years, had disappeared for- 

 ever, I came to the rescue and for twenty-seven years I have struggled, almost alone, 

 in the same cause. How far I have succeeded, it is not for me to say. Having cai-ried 

 so long the whole burden on my shoulders, I know only too well how heavy it has been, 

 and that my adversaries were not always very fair in their opposition. However, the 

 time seems to have arrived for more just and less passionate discussion, and more steady 

 progress is now at hand. 



The United States Geological Survey has a splendid field of operation. It has al- 

 ready begun in earnest, and, after some unavoidable waveriug in handling such a difficult 

 question and as a first result, not only has it recognized the existence of the Taconie 

 system, but the geologist who has charge of the work accepts already two-thirds of the 

 strata described by Emmons — that is to say, eighteen thousand feet of strata contain- 

 ing a part of the primordial founa — as certainly Taconie. One-third, about five or eight 

 thousand feet, " the black shxtes, Stockbridgc marble and sparry limestone," remains as 

 debatable ground. 



From my own researches in the Lake Champlain region and around Quebec city, I have 

 not the smallest doubt as to the propriety of including also those stratified rocks as the 

 upper part of the Taconie system and l)elow the Potsdam sandstone. It is now a ques- 

 tion of time, and in a few years the whole original Taconie system, as proposed by Dr. 

 Emmons, will be accepted and regarded as the most precious jewel in the crown of 

 American geology. 



We have now to wait for minute surveys of the region embraced between central 

 'New York, Quebec, the Green Mountains, the Taconie range and the Hudson River. 

 "With all the resources of practical stratigraphy, paleontology, lithology, good topograph- 

 ical maps, detailed sections, geological maps surveyed with great care and exactness, the 

 U. S. Geological Survey will complete a most important work, for it will be the base 

 absolutely necessary for the geology of all the eastern, northern, southern and central 

 part of North America; and, as a pioneer, who during many years of hard and solitary 

 toil has seen the difficulties and has never despaired of the Taconie cause, I salute with 

 joy the arrival of new observers, better fitted out and armed than I was, sure that now 

 the truth will not be kept much longer in the background. 



II. Sections around Parker quarrt at Georgia. The Lorraine shales versus 

 THE Hudson River group. The suppressed Emmons' agricultural 



AND geological MAP OP THE STATE OF NeW YorK. CoLONY. 



In 1880, I published a resume of my researches around the northern part of Lake 

 Champlain, under the title: "Sur les colonies dans les roches Taconiques des bords du 

 lac Champlain" (Bulletin 8oc. Geol. France, 3® ser., ix, 18), with a detailed geological 

 map, covering the classical ground of Chazy, Isle La Motte, Georgia, Swanton, High- 

 gate and Phillipsburgh, and several sections in the text and on one plate. 



My observations were made at intervals between 1849, 1861 and 1874; and I know 

 that several portions of the country comprised in my map needed a careful revision in 

 the field. But travels and very grave illness prevented me from finishing the work, as 



