144 THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM. 



York, as now understood by Professor Hall and others, and also of 

 the groups in Pennsylvania, named by Rogers Yergent and Ponent 

 (? IX. and X. of Mr Lesley), is as decidedly Devonian, and quite 

 distinct from that of the Carboniferous period.* 



For Mr Lesley's ability as a stratigraphical geologist I have the 

 highest respect ; and with reference to the present subject, would 

 merely desire to point out that he may not have possessed a sufficient 

 number of facts to warrant some of his generalizations, on which in 

 the meantime I would, for the reasons above stated, desire geologists 

 to suspend their judgment. 



The following is the rejoinder of Professor Lesley, omitting some 

 general discussions not important to the subject in hand : — 



" Professor Dawson's first objection is a begging of the very ques- 

 tion, Whether the coal measures of Nova Scotia are ' enormously 

 developed? ' That, in one little spot of the earth's surface like Nova 

 Scotia, and that, too, midway between the great coal areas of America 

 and those of Europe, wherein the thickness of coal measures proper 

 ranges from 2000 to 5000 feet, if they even attain the latter size, there 

 should be an anomalous deposit of 25,000 feet, is incredible. What 

 the great Bohemian palaeontologist, by unerring instinct, said to us 

 after our thirty years' war over the Taconic system, there must be a 

 mistake somewhere, I must repeat to those who so 'enormously develop ' 

 the Nova Scotia coal measures. And my intention in the paper on 

 Nova Scotia coal was only to suggest one formula on which the error 

 might be discussed. I distinctly repudiated the safety of instituting 

 1 minute comparisons.' My comparison of the Cape Breton coals and 

 the column at Pittsburg was carefully made in the most general 

 manner, and the resemblance called a coincidence. But the value of 

 the comparison remains ; for it affords a new argument in favour of 

 the family likeness of those parts of the general coal measures of dif- 

 ferent countries, which have a right to the specific title of ' productive 

 coals.' The argument also remains good, that if 2000 feet of coal 

 measures in Missouri can be recognised in 2000 feet of coal measures 

 in Kentucky, Virginia, and Eastern Pennsylvania, the very same 

 system of beds, bed for bed, being demonstrated first by stratigraphy, 

 and then by palaeontology (and such is the fact), why not in Nova 

 Scotia ? 



" I have no doubt that some of the coal measures of the British 

 Provinces may have been ' deposited in more or less separated areas 

 at the sides of the Devonian and Silurian hills,' as Professor Dawson 



* £ee Paper on Devonian Flora of Eastern America, Jour. Lond. Geol. Soc. 

 November, 1862. 



