VERMONT AND WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 



453 



Fontane's work in Virginia, have confirmed this, i count this a great point 

 gained in American stratigraphy — the recognition of the newer gneissic series 

 above the Iluronian, to which I have given the name of Montalban. (The 

 I'erranovan snggested in 1870, was made up of Montalhan and Taconian, as I 

 have since shown.)" 



Later, in tlie Azoic Rocks (pp. 224, 225), Dr. Hunt, ia referring to 

 the first letter given above, says : 



" The above conclusions as to this overlying gneiss and mica-schist series, 

 was soon after made known by the writer, in his address in August, 1871, 

 where it was said that the schists both of the Green Mountain and the White 

 Mountain series ' are represented in Michigan, as appears by the recent collec- 

 tions of Major Brooks He informs me that these latter schists are the 



highest of the crystalline strata in the northern peninsula It was these 



schists, and the granitoid gneisses, from the Marquette region, which the 

 writer [Dr. Hunt] so long ago as 1871, referred to the White M,ountain or 

 Montalban series, then, as now, placed by him above the Huronian — a testi- 

 mony to the value of lithological characters in geology." 



We thus see that Dr. Hunt had for over eighteen months advocated 

 the view which he so emphatically denied having held ; and further- 

 more, that after the delivery of his Presidential Address he claimed to 

 have held it at that time. Also, we have shown that he distinctly 

 stated the same view in that Address. But it is unnecessary for us to 

 comment on the methods of Dr. Hunt as revealed in the preceding ex- 

 tracts j they speak loudly for themselves. 



Professor Dana, in reference to Dr. Hunt's views regarding the age of 

 rocks carrying crystals of staurolite, cyanite, or andalusite, remarked as 

 follows : — 



" Now the fact is that those same Taconic rocks, unquestionably of the 

 Taconic system according to Emmons himself, and, therefore, Hunt attesting, 

 of Lower Silurian age, contain in some places staurolite crystals." (Am. Jour. 

 Sci., 1872, (3) IV., pp. 104, 105.) 



Also, in the same paper, Professor Dana thus replied to Dr. Hunt's 

 remark, that Emmons expressly excluded from the Taconic system all 

 crystalline rocks : 



" This exclusion is an easy feat for a speculator with pen in hand, like many 

 closet feats ; but it is more than herculean in actual fact, since the very 

 Taconic mountains themselves, that is, the very rocks called Taconic by 

 Enunons, are partly gneiss, gneissoid mica schist, and chloritic talcoid schist, 

 as well as talcoid schist ; and these rocks are so involved together that specu- 

 lation will never bring them into that kind of order which Mr. Hunt's notions 

 require." Q. c, p. 104.) 





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