HILL: GEOLOGY OF JAMAICA. 13 
as a single formation under the vague head of the “Miocene.” Further- 
more, the precedent of not specifying the locality from which the fossils 
came was followod in all the subsequent paleontologie literature of 
Guppy and others, and by Dall, who referred the rocks of Jamaica, 
included by the others in the Miocene, to the Oligocene. 
Thus the true sequence of the Jamaican strata was confused in early 
literature; the proper place of the Cambridge beds (the true Yellow 
limestones of the wost), at the base of the White Limestone Series, 
appeared for a brief moment, next to be obliterated by erroneous correla- 
tion with the entirely different and higher Bowden beds of the east, and 
all conception of the position and age of a greater part of the great 
White limestones which mostly lie between them was destroyed. This 
confusion has become so confounded in the passing years that the present 
State of knowledge to be derived from the literature is chaotic. Not 
only after reading the geologic literature of Jamaica, but after going 
over the island with these reports in hand, the opinion already expressed 
by others? is emphasized, that * clearly there are many interesting 
questions in the geology of Jamaica which are awaiting further investi- 
gation, and the mutual relations of these white marls and limestones is 
not the least important of them." To straighten out this entanglement 
will be our earnest endeavor. 
It is but justice to say concerning the volume of official reports, that, 
despite their discrepancies, they are full of valuable uncorrelated data. 
Although unintelligible to one who has not studied the island, we do not 
hesitate, after two years of careful study of its pages and the localities 
of which they treat, to say that by careful re-editing, including the 
correlation of the observations on the various parishes under a uniform 
and systematie nomenclature, and striking out much of the Appendix, 
the volume could be mado a valuable guidebook of Jamaican geology. 
The writer appreciates the worth and value of the individual reports, 
and acknowledges that they represent important steps in the progres” 
sive research which contribute to the ultimate solution of the problems, 
and that the following pages would have been impossible without 
them, 
In view of the complications presented, and in the light of additional 
knowledge in the present paper, the formations will be classified de novo, 
with proper credit wherever possible for all previous determinations. 
1 Proc, U. S. National Museum, Vol, XIX., Washington, 1896. 
2 Jukes-Browne and Harrison, Quart, Jour, Geol. Soc. London, 1896, Vol. XLVII. 
pp. 190, 221. 
