VERMONT AND "WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 



457 



Wing (Am. Jour. Sci., 1877, (3) XIV., pp. 202, 203; 1870, XVIL, 



p. 387) : 



** From the facts brought forward it is manifest that the limestone schists 

 and qujirtzyte, malcing up the limestone series of Vermont and Berkshire, are 

 continuous formations, and that they are conformable throughout^ .... The 

 limestone series is made up wholly of Lower Silurian formations ; that is, of 

 formations not okler than the primordial or Cambrian, nor newer than the 



Cincinnati or Hudson Hiver group The Taconic mountains of western 



Berkshire are a direct continuation of the ' great central slate-belt ' of Ver- 

 mont. The two make one range and one rock-formation, and consist of the 



sauK! kinds of rocks similarly upturned In Vermont the Taconic slates 



(th(.ise of the central slate-belt) overlie the adjoining limestone in one or more 

 synclinals, as phiinly shown in Mount Dorset, Danby Mountain, E([uinox 

 Mountain, Spruce Peak in Arlington, and Mount Anthony in Bennington ; 

 and in Berkshire they liave tlic same position, as observed in Greylock and 

 Mount Washington. Hence in both States the Taconic slates overlie, or are 



younger tJian, the adjoining limestone The Taconic schists are, according 



to the evidence, of the age of the Hudson River group." 



The limestones and micaceous cpiartzitcs of Berkshire County, Mass., 

 and clsowlicro in Now England, were stated by Dr. Hunt, in 1875, to 

 belong to the White Mountain or Montalban scries. (Proc. Bost. Sec. 

 Nat. Hist, 187.5, XVIL, p. 509.) 



In 1878 Dr. Hunt remarked (Preface, Chemical Essays, 2d cd., 

 pp. xix.-xxii.) that the result of his study of the Taconic rocks had 

 led him 



" to conclude that what has been said of them in Essay XIII. Part 1, and in 

 Essay XV. Part 3, is only true of that portion which Emmons at first in- 

 cluded in the upper pail of his Taconic system under the general name of the 

 Taconic sLxtes, Ijut in 1855 separated from the underlying portions, and de- 

 scribed as th.e Upper Taconic series. This is no other than the Quebec group 

 of Logan, which is the northward prolongation of the Taconic slates from 



eastern New York The strata of this region, an<l of its extension 



norlh and south, including the western border of the whole Atlantic belt, 

 from the gulf of St. Lawrence to Ahxbama, have, as is well knoAvn, a general 

 higli <lip to tlie eastward, attended with many dislocations, folds, and inver- 

 sions ; as a result of which the newer sediments appear to pass beneath tlie 

 older ones, and even beneath the still more ancient crystalline rock's of the 

 belt, gi«ving rise to some of the nu.)st per])lexing problems in American geoh)gy. 

 The (anna of the Upper Taconic rocks, including the forms found at Troy, 

 New York, at Georgia, Vermont, and at Phillipsburg, Point Levis, and Bic, 

 in the }>rovince of Quebec, presents, as far as known, nothing lower than 

 tlie Menevian horizon, and belongs to the Lower and Middle Cambrian of 

 Sedgwick The lower Taconic series of Emmons, embracing in ascend- 



Vr 



