GEOLOGY. 455 



The distinctness of the Taconian from the overlying Cambrian, at one 

 time included with it under the name of Upper Taconic, being apparent, 

 there is no longer any reason for calling the latter Taconic, or using 

 this name as a synonym for Cambrian, as is done by Marcou : nor yet 

 in arguing, from the Cambrian fauna found in the upper rocks, the 

 Cambrian or Lower Silurian age of the Lower Taconic, as is done by 

 Dana. 



In the last year's report reference was made to the recognition by 

 Crosby of a great series of rocks in Trinidad, the Caribbean group of 

 Guppy, which are unconformably overlaid by fossiliferous Cambrian 

 strata, and have moreover the lithological characters of tbe North 

 American Taconian, the Lower Taconic of Emmons, and the Itacolu- 

 mitic group of Lieber. Crosby has since noticed a great development in 

 the mountains of eastern Cuba of a similar series, where they form a belt 

 six or eight miles wide, and are highly inclined, with an east and west 

 strike. They include great masses of white crystalline limestone, often 

 micaceous and associated with hydro-micaceous and chloritic schists. 

 These, with the similar rocks of Trinidad and the Spanish Main, he com- 

 pares with the Lower Taconic rocks of western New England, and des- 

 ignates as Taconian. They are, according to him, entirely distinct from 

 auother great series of uncrystalline limestones with sandstones and 

 fissile slates, with which they have been confounded, which, though they 

 have as yet yielded no fossils, are supposed to be equivalent to the Meso- 

 zoic and Tertiary strata of San Domingo and Jamaica. 



GEOLOGY OF SPAIN. 



Barrois has lately published an important memoir on the ancient rocks 

 of Galicia and the Asturias in Spain, some of the results of which throw 

 light on American geology. The primitive rocks of the Cantabrian 

 chain, granites, gneisses, and crystalline schists, are in these provinces 

 overlaid by a great mass of strata including the whole Paleozoic suc- 

 cession from the base of the Cambriau to the top of the coal meas- 

 ures. In the province of Toledo the base of this series is a Scoli- 

 thus sandstone, which, according to Cortazar, there rests directly upon 

 the crystalline schists; but in the Asturias there are found beneath a 

 similar sandstone a hundred meters or more of limestone and shales 

 containing an abundant Cambrian fauna, including several species of 

 Paradoxides, with Conocephalites^ Arionellus, and a cystidean. Between 

 these fossiliferous strata and the crystalline schists there intervenes in 

 the region under notice a volume of not less than 3,000 meters of strata 

 described as argiliites and quartzites, with dolomites and limestones, 

 sometimes saccharoidal and cipoliu marbles, with beds of specular iron. 

 This great series of uufossiliferous strata is included with the overlying 

 fossiliferous beds by Barrois, under the common name of Cambrian, which 

 he defines as including the first fauna of Barrande. To these succeed 

 immediately, and without a stratigraphical break, the Scolithua beds 



