Lan ri sat nt ds jé dx cl: 
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF SERPENTINES, 195 
§ 81. It will be remembered by students in geology that in 1870 the present writer 
announced his conclusion that there exists in North America, besides the Laurentian 
gneisses, “a great series of crystalline schists, including mica-schists, staurolite and chias- 
tolite-schists, with quartzose and hornblendic rocks, and some limestones, the whole asso- 
ciated with great masses of fine-greined gneisses, the so-called granites of many parts of 
New England.” * These rocks were especially indicated as occurring in the White Moun- 
tains of New Hampshire, but were also said to be found to the northwest of Lake Superior, 
as well as in Ontario and in Newfoundland, in which last two regions they were believed 
to rest unconformably upon the Laurentian gneiss. In both of these latter localities, there 
were provisionally associated with this group some higher limestones, with crystalline 
schists, and for the whole series the name of Terranovan was suggested. 
§ 82. In the following year, 1871, in an address before the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, these rocks were farther noticed under the name of the White 
Mountain series. The higher limestones and schists, which were not found on the geolo- 
gical section then described, were however excluded. This great series of younger 
gneisses and mica-schists was then assigned to a horizon above the Huronian, and as 
a distinctive name was desirable for a series so conspicuous in American geology, that of 
Montalban (from the latinized name of the White Mountains) was proposed in the same 
year. + It was at the same time shown that the view held by most American geologists, 
that these rocks were altered paleozoic strata was untenable, and that they were to be 
regarded as pre-paleozoic. At a later period, the overlying limestones and schists, at first 
associated with these newer gneisses and mica-schists, were refered to the Lower Taconic 
of Emmons—the Taconian series. (f) 
When, in 1870 and 1871, I thus attempted to subdivide the crystalline schists above 
the ancient gneiss of North America, and to define, above the Huronian, a younger series of 
gneisses with mica-schists, I was not aware that Von Hauer had already been led by his 
studies to similar conclusions for the Eastern Alps, and had discovered above the great 
pietre-verdi zone, a series of gneisses with micaceous schists, as indicated in divisions 5 and 
6 of his section (§ 60). Gastaldi, in 1871, and for years after, included these, with all the 
crystalline schists found above the ancient or central gneiss, in one great group of newer 
schists, which he assimilated to the Huronian. In reviewing this subject, in 1878, £ I 
pointed out that the uppermost crystalline schists of the Western Alps should be separated 
from the Huronian, and compared them with the Taconian, while I noted the fact “that 
gneisses and mica-schists similar to those of the Montalban are found in many parts of the 
Alps.” It was not, however, until after my studies among these rocks in 1881, that I 
referred the newer gneissic series of that region to the Montalban, for the two-fold reason 
that it occupies a similar stratigraphical horizon and is lithologically indistinguishable 
from it. 
§ 83. Not less important in this connection is the succession of crystalline rocks in 
eastern Bavaria, which may be compared with those of Saxony. We have, in ascending 

* Amer. Jour. Science. (3) 1, 85. 
+ Proc. Amer. Assoc. Ady. Science, 1871. p. 6; also Chem. and Geol. Essays, pp. 194, 244, 282; Das Ausland, 
Dec. 25, 1871, p. 1288, and Azoic Rocks, p. 181. 
t Azoic Rocks, pp. 201-211, 215; { Ibid, p. 245. 
