TACONIC QUESTION IN GEOLOGY. 253 
to the original Taconic, was not apparently sustained by any other consideration than that 
of giving a new designation to the anomalous group of rocks which then received from 
him the name of Upper Taconic. 
§96. We have now to consider more at length the history of the First Graywacke belt 
of Haton which, by his observations, and those of Emmons and Mather, was traced from 
below Quebec, on the St. Lawrence, southward through Vermont, and along the east side 
of the valley of the Hudson. Mather, who supposed this belt to be represented farther 
south, along the west side of the Hudson, by the Shawangunk range (a prolongation of 
the Kittatinny Mountain of New Jersey and Pennsylvania), which is of Oneida-Medina 
age, and consequently belongs to the Second Graywacke, referred the whole belt north 
and east of the Hudson, to this period. In the opinion of Emmons, however, the First 
Graywacke, to the west and south of the Hudson, was represented, not by the Shawangunk, 
but by a parallel range a little to the eastward, to be mentioned below (§ 98). This Upper 
Taconic belt, according to him, is continued southwestward, with some interruptions, across 
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, into the valley of Virginia; where, near Wythville, and 
again near Abingdon, he described sections of the Upper Taconic resting upon Lower 
Taconic rocks. 
§ 97. We have not, however, so far as I am aware, any detailed notice of these Upper 
Taconic rocks in the great valley, from Virginia to the region east of the Hudson. In 
Pennsylvania, they have received little notice from the two geological surveys, though 
they are, as I have already stated, largely developed in the great valley, in the interval 
between the Delaware and the Susquehanna Rivers (§ 30). They were here included by 
H. D. Rogers in the Matinal series, and placed by him below the Levant sandstone. He, 
at the same time, noticed their resemblance to the beds immediately above this sandstone ; 
a likeness which led Mather to refer them, in eastern New York, to this higher horizon. 
It will be remembered that the roofing-slates of the Delaware, which succeed the Auroral 
limestones, and are supposed to be included in the Lower Taconic of Emmons, are assigned, 
both by Rogers and by Chance, to a position near the base of the series of about 6,000 feet of 
so-called Matinal rocks (§ 29). This great series in Pennsylvania has thus the stratigra- 
phical position, as well as the characters of the Upper Taconic or First Graywacke, which 
is so conspicuous, both to the northeast and the southwest, along the Appalachian valley. 
§98. The question now arises to what extent these rocks are found to the eastward of 
the great valley ; that is to say, east of the Blue Ridge, the South Mountain, and its northern 
prolongation from the Highlands of the Hudson into New England and Canada. So far 
as yet known, there is nothing to represent the Upper Taconic in this eastern area, north of 
the Highlands. Resting upon the ancient gneiss of the Highlands in Orange county, New 
York, there is, however, a range of rocks, formerly designated as graywacke, which were 
by Mather described as a parallel belt lying to the southeast of Shawangunk Mountain, of 
which he regarded it as a repetition. This graywacke-belt was said by Horton to consti- 
tute, in parts of Orange county, two or more narrow bands, the strata of which dip east- 
ward at high angles, and lie directly upon the ancient gneiss, beneath which, in some 
cases, they seem to pass. The continuation of this belt in New Jersey is known as the 
Green-Pond Mountain range. This, while regarded by Mather as belonging to the Second 
Graywacke, was by Rogers conjectured to be an outlier of the great mesozoic area which 
lies farther to the southeast ; but by Emmons was supposed to belong to the First Gray- 
