On the Geological Age of the White Mountains. 17 
tively of the Levant white sandstone and one of the higher Le- 
vant shales near the horizon of the fossiliferous iron ore. Upon 
this view some of the intermediate shales are absent, and when 
we advert to the distance between the White Mountains and the 
nearest outcrop of the Levant series in New York, this ought 
not to surprise us. Upon the less probable conjecture that the 
fossiliferous bed is a portion of the Matinal shales, no assump- 
tion of a deficiency in the series is required, for the Levant white 
sandstone comes naturally next in the ascending order. ‘The gen- 
eral conclusions to which we are brought by this unexpected dis- 
covery of a fossiliferous formation, related evidently to one of 
the earlier Apalachian periods, are not however in the slightest 
degree affected by this trivial amount of uncertainty respecting 
the age of either bed. We proceed therefore to state the infer- 
ences deducible from the foregoing facts. 
One of the most interesting conclusions to be drawn from the 
evidence afforded by the above described fossiliferous strata, re- 
lates to the geological age of the chain of the White Mountains. 
These strata present convincing proofs that the region, now oc- 
eupied by this mountain chain, was overspread by the waters of 
the ancient Apalachian ocean at an era as late in the Paleozoic 
ages, as the Matinal, or more probably the Levant periods. Placed 
as the district is, immediately between the nearly contempo- 
raneous formations of the states of Maine and New Brunswick 
on the one hand, and Vermont and New York on the other, it 
fills up an interval in the area of the Apalachian rocks, which 
hitherto seemed vacant, and suggests strongly that the waters of 
the Matinal or Levant eras, extended continuously across at least 
all northern New England. As it is known that the Apalachian 
strata abound as far to the N. E. as Nova Scotia, and perhaps 
Newfoundland, and spread to a great distance north and north- 
westward in the continent, the prodigious magmitude of the Apa- 
lachian sea, at least in its earlier periods, is made apparent. But 
while these fossiliferous beds of the White Mountains make it 
probable that the continuity of this sea was unbroken by any 
land in the position of New Hampshire before the Levant period, 
they indicate as plainly that some land did emerge after this 
period had commenced. How long subsequent to the deposition 
of the earlier Levant strata that portion of the bed of the ocean’ 
was uplifted into land, it is not practicable very positively to ascer- 
