180 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Par. Vermonti, Par. macrocepltalus, Par. {Pagura) quadrispinosus, 

 aud 3Iicrodiscus quadricostatus." 



This finishes the list of documents publislied by Dr. Emmons. In 

 September, 18G0, he went to North Carolina as State Geologist, and 

 continued within the enemy's lines during the civil war until he died, 

 in 18G3, at his plantation in Brunswick County, on the 1st of October. 

 Notwithstanding the difficulty of his position, he received the first 

 memoir published in his favor by Barrande and Marcou at the end of 

 December, 18G0, and the following extracts are from his last letters. 



"We must remember that a powerful, systematic opposition, verging 

 on persecution, had been at work from the beginning against the 

 Taconic system aud its author. This is necessary in order to follow 

 clearly the progress and development of the Taconic system question. 

 Its adversaries pretended that the strata in the northern part of New 

 York State, placed beneath the Potsdam sandstone by Emmons, were 

 the beds of Lorrain Shales, above tlie " Utica Slate," these being 

 called Hudson River group for the eastern region of the State ; that 

 farther east these beds of the Hudson River group were followed in 

 concordant superposition by metamorphic rocks, which were, according 

 to them, the " Upper Silurian " and even " Devonian." In a word, 

 the Potsdam sandstone was the base of the sedimentary rocks, the most 

 ancient group of all, resting directly upon the gneiss and granite ; and 

 even sometimes, as in the Highlands, the Potsdam sandstone was 

 altered and " becoming gneissoid and granitic." 



The positions were well taken. On the one side, Dr. Emmons de- 

 scribed strata thirty thousand feet in thickness as a special system of 

 rocks having a well-defined stratigraphy, its own lithology, and contain- 

 ing its own fossil organized remains, constituting the most ancient and 

 the most important system in the stratigraphic series. On the other 

 hand, his adversaries denied all this in toto, using the very elastic word 

 melamorphism to explain everything. 



1859-60. — " Tlie Twelfth Annual Report of the Regents .... of 

 the State Cabinet of Natural History " of New York, dated IMarch 15, 

 1859, Albany, contains (p. 59) a notice under the title of " Trllo- 

 bites of the Shales of the Hudson River Group." 



There are only three fragments of Trilobites described by Prof. 

 James Hall, under the names of Olenus Thompsoni, Olenus Vermontana, 

 and PcUnra (Olemis) Holopyga. 



Tlie description of these fossils collected from the schists " in the 

 town of Georgia," and presented as coming from the shales of the 

 Hudson River group of Vermont, ends with the following note: "In 



