i7i the State ofNelv Ycnk. 199 



sandstone in the county of Monmouth. He then infers that 

 this (supposed) error casts " a doubt on Mr. F.'s opinion, 

 that none of the beds which are in England higher in the 

 series of formations than the coal measures, are to be found 

 in North America, north of 40° N. lat." 



The details by which Mr. Featherstonhaugh supported his 

 views of the succession of rocks in North America, in his letter 

 to Mr, Murchison, read before the Geological Society, Ja- 

 nuary 2, 1829, were necessarily excluded from the abstract 

 of that paper, published in No. 9 of the Proceedings of the 

 Geological Society. But it does not appear in any part of 

 that abstract, that reliance was placed upon the old red sand- 

 stone, more than upon any other rock, in the table over which 

 his name is placed, to assert the agreement in the order of 

 rocks in England and North America, which was the main geo- 

 logical truth of the letter to Mr. Murchison. 



If Mr. F. has fallen into so great an error, then that agree- 

 ment does not exist : and it will be true, according to Mr. 

 Eaton's Synopsis, that the productive bituminous coal-mea- 

 sures of this continent are found much higher up in the 

 series than the lias. If E. W. B., as a philosophical geologist, 

 is prepared to admit this, Mr. F. is not. He perceives in such 

 a proposition an utter abandonment of a well-adjusted and 

 continuous operation of causes, which constitutes one of the 

 highest and most attractive branches of geological knowledge. 

 And from this consequence there can be no escape : for the 

 author of the Synopsis already named, has placed his 3rd 

 grauwacke above his cornitiferous limestone ; has described 

 the thin beds of coal lying in it in the State of New York*, 

 and has advised the boring for thicker beds. This has not 

 yet been done in the State of New York, though even the Go- 

 vernment has been strongly solicited to encourage the imder- 

 taking. But in Pennsylvania the coal-beds of this formation 

 are thicker, and at Pittsburgh the coal lies immediately upon 

 the rock called Cornitiferous in the Synopsis. 



If Mr. F. has fallen into this error, he must then contend, 

 according to the Synopsis, that the lias in North America lies) 

 under the carboniferous limestone; for if any limestone cor- 

 responding in its geological associations, in its extent, in its 

 mineral and cavernous structure, i?i its fossils, deserves to be 

 thought the equivalent of the carboniferous limestone of the 

 British islands, then the cornitiferous lime-rock, and the geo- 

 diferous lime-rock of the Synopsis, constitute its ecjuivalent. 



• Canal Hocks, Part i. page 141. 



But 



