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his address as Vice-President before the American Associa- 

 tion in 1871, " On the Progress of the Appalachian System. ' r 

 He distributed the crystalline rocks overlying what he con- 

 sidered as the ancient floor of granitic gneiss, of Laurent! an 

 age, into groups which he named the Norian, Huronian. 

 Montalban, Taconian and Keeweenian, thus confining to 

 limited area the wider range assigned by Sir "W. Logan to the 

 Haroman. 



His conclusions were based on geogenic as well as geo- 

 gnostic considerations, but they gave great offense to his old- 

 colleagues in the Canadian Geological Survey, and led t> a 

 regretable controversy with his old friend, Prof. Dana. But 

 to Hunt truth as he saw it was truth, and to compromise with 

 truth was a crime. And to him, as to many another scientist, 

 all sense of proportion was lost as to what is essential and 

 what non-essential, and trifling differences in opinion about 

 the position of paleozoic strata were discussed with as much 

 vehemence as though life and death depended on the issue. 

 But whether his stratigraphical distribution of rocks comes 

 to be generally accepted or not, no geologist brought to 1 

 on the study of the older rocks a wider range of observat; 

 or a greater wealth of chemical knowledge, and his facts and 

 reasonings will always prove a storehouse of inl'on nation to 

 the student, even if his conclusions be ultimately contradicted. 

 He took little interest in palaeontology, and devoted but 

 little attention to the newer rocks, one reason being, that his 

 earlier geological studies in Canada were confined to the 

 azoic and the lowest members of the palaeozoic series ; another 

 being, that the crystalline rocks stimulated his speculation* 

 on the chemistry ot the primeval 'earth more acutely than did 

 the later sedimentary deposits. 



Another geological subject upon which he felt and ex- 

 pressed himself warmly was Sir Robert Murchison's era- 

 of the word Cambrian from his Silurian system, whereby he 

 not only, as Hunt then considered, u committed a stratigraph- 

 ical and paheological error, but cast a slight upon the vener- 

 able author of ihe name, Adam Sedgwick." lie became the 



