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1908-9. | THE GEOLOGICAL CONNEXIONS OF THE CARIBEAN REGION. 381 
geological age of Jamaican and other formations, but on this I have to 
observe that there never was on my part any pretense of discriminating 
between different horizons, either in the case of Jamaica or of Haiti. I 
had no means of doing this. I merely described the fossils and called 
them miocene, because those who preceded me had done so. It is true 
that I stated that the beds in which Orbitoides and Nummulina occurred 
were supposed to be miocene, but I was led into this error by my 
predecessors. In the case of Trinidad, I had more or less limited 
opportunities of studying the formations and of defining the fossil 
fauna of each locality. This soon led me to perceive that among the 
West Indian strata previously lumped together under the common name 
of miocene there were older strata as shown by the organic remains. At 
first I timidly called some of these “lower miocene,” so as not to depart 
too far from received views. But later on I perceived that this was too 
much of a compromise, and that probably the expression “ cretaceo- 
eocene” might not be putting too great an antiquity on such rocks, for 
example, the lower beds (Sanfernando beds) of the Naparima series in 
Trinidad. 
Gregory (Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond., 1895, page 298) says it is advisable 
to correlate the whole of the beds in Barbados below the oceanic series 
with the Sanfernando or Naparima marls of Trinidad. These he says 
are generally assigned to the oligocene, as, for example, by Heilprin. 
The fossil molluskan and echinoderm faunas of Naparima and 
Manzanilla in Trinidad are entirely different to and of an older type than 
those of the Caroni beds in Trinidad, which are the equivalents of the 
Haitian and Jamaican faunas which have been called oligocene. I 
cannot admit that the name oligocene is wanted in the nomenclature of 
West Indian geology. For our present use the expressions pliocene, 
miocene and eocene are sufficient. They indicate the three great 
divisions of the West Indian tertiaries which are represented in different 
portions of the Caribean area, and each of which with some common 
species has a characteristic and distinctive fauna. The Scotland beds of 
Barbados may very likely go with the eocene of Naparima and S. Barts. 
It is necessary, I think, to make this conclusion clear, as there seems to 
have been some misapprehension on the point. I do not shut my eyes 
to the fact that there are some remarkable differences between the 
miocene faunas of Jamaica and Haiti, but on the whole the resemblance 
is very strong and can only be satisfied by placing them under the same 
geological head of miocene, while the strata I have indicated as eocene 
must be kept distinct and not confounded under the name of oligocene 
