245 



of gray and black sandy slates, sometimes passing into a true yellowish 

 sandstone, with nodules of oxide of iron, and spots of red oxide of iron 

 on some slates. Thickness, five to six hundred feet. In this division, 

 fifty yards from the house of Mr, Noah E. Parker, in West Georgia, 

 the celebrated Georgia Trilobites were found. They were discovered 

 accidentally, about six years ago, by Mr. Parker, in quarrying large 

 slates for a floor. Having found one Trilobite, and not knowing what 

 it could be, Mr. Parker showed it to the schoolmaster of the village, 

 who wrote at once to the late Zadock Thompson, of Burlington, then 

 State Geologist of Vermont. Mr. Thompson immediately visited the 

 quarry, and made a collection of several specimens and species ; unfor- 

 tunately he died a short time after, without publishing anything about 

 this discovery. The specimens having been placed in the hands of 

 Mr. James Hall, that paleontologist described and figured them in a 

 memoir under the very odd title of Trilobites of the Shales of the Hud- 

 son River Group : Albany, 1860. It was this title that startled Mr. Bar- 

 rande so much, and was the occasion of bringing once more before the 

 world, and this time not to be suppressed, the Taconic system of my 

 learned friend Dr. Emmons. Mr. James Hall does not give a single 

 geological fact to sustain his opinion of the Hudson River group ; he re- 

 gards it as a matter of course, beyond all doubt ; and in order to give it 

 a sanction which will make all discussion useless, he calls to his support 

 the testimony of Mr. Logan (who, by the way, has never visited the 

 locality), and adds, as overwhelming proof, that " it would be quite 

 superfluous for him to add one word in support of the opinion of 

 the most able stratigraphical geologist of the American continent." 

 The only other geological indication that I have been able to find is in 

 Silliman's Journal for January, 1861, p. 125, where Mr. James D, 

 Dana calls the Georgia rocks " metamorphic black slates." I regret 

 to say that all these statements and opinions are erroneous ; there is no 

 -trace of the Hudson River group at Georgia, nor at any other place in 

 the vicinity, and I was unable to find indications of metamorphism in 

 any of the rocks there, for at least three miles around the quarry of 

 Mr. Parker. The fossils are not numerous, with the exception of the 

 Chrondites ; and the Trilobites are certainly much less common there 

 than the Paradoxides Harlani in the quarry of Mr. Haywood at 

 Braintree. I found at West Georgia the three Trilobites described by 

 Mr. James Hall, Paradoxides (Olenellus) Thompsoni, P. Vermontana, 

 Peltura holopyga; and besides Oholella cingidata, a Fungus, Chron- 

 dites, and a Bryozoon, related to the Graptopora socialis (Salt.), all 

 primordial fossils. 



Until this summer West Georgia was the only place for these Trilo- 

 bites. Two other localities have been added in the last two months. 

 Dr. G. M. Hall and Rev. J. B. Perry have found the P. TJwmjjsoni, 



