10 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
near the top of the same.! Furthermore, in this mixture the erroneously 
combined group was given the stratigraphic position of the Yellow lime- 
stones below the White limestones, and the age position of the Bowden 
beds. This resulted in making all the White limestone, much of which 
is pre-Miocene, appear as overlying the Bowden Oligocene. As this 
error has had far reaching importance in obscuring Antillean geology 
and paleontology, we give a brief sketch of its origin and history. 
The following section,? showing the sequence of the Jamaican forma- 
tions, was published by Woodward in 1862, seven years before the ap- 
pearance of the official reports in 1869, as a posthumous interpretation 
of Barrett’s conclusions as he (Woodward) understood them. The 
names on the right are those to be used by us for the equivalent beds 
of the section. The sequence of the formations, as given in this sec- 
tion, corresponds more nearly with their true occurrence than any of 
the subsequent compilations to be noted. 
FrovuRE 1. Woodward's Interpretation of Barrett's Section of the 
Jamaican Sequence. 
Barrett’s Section. Equivalent Nomenclature of this Paper. 
6. Pliocene Limestone and Marls, Bowden and other Beds of the Coast 
5. Miocene Limestone, Oceanic Series. [Series. 
4. Orbitoidal Limestone, Cambridge Beds. 
3. Gray Shales, Richmond Beds. 
2 
Cretaceous Limestone and Hippurites, y 
Blue Mountain Series. 
. Purple Conglomerate. 
= 
This original section, supposedly by Barrett, in addition to giving the 
position of the Hippnrites limestone, from which Orbitoides and Num- 
mulin® were reported, gave in its correct place, under the name of Or- 
bitoidal limestone but without age designation, the beds called Yellow 
1 The Bowden formation, although one of the most important in the Jamaican 
sequence, and the one from which all of the alleged Miocene fossils of Jamaica 
have come, seems not to have been clearly defined or understood by these earlier 
writers, — probably because of their supposed identity with the Yellow limestone. 
See further details, pages 82-84 of this paper. 
2 The Geologist, London, 1862, Vol. V. p. 378. 
