HILL: GEOLOGY OF JAMAICA. 9 
pages is by Sir Roderick I. Murchison. The first general summary of 
the island is by James Gay Sawkins. Individual reports of the different 
parishes are by Barrett, Wall, Sawkins, Lennox, and Brown. The Ap- 
pendix contains a discussion and resume of the paleontology and age of 
the rocks of the Caribbean Sea by Robert Etheridge, with paleonto- 
logic determinations by Duncan, Carrick Moore, T. Rupert Jones, and 
others. 
In the reports upon the individual parishes each field worker used an 
independent and often conflicting nomenclature for the various forma- 
tions described, and frequently expressed contradictory opinions con- 
cerning tho age of the same formations. For instance, as has been 
pointed out by other writers? with respect to the age of the White lime- 
stone, “the reports of the surveyors are inconsistent with one another. 
In some places (as on pp. 23 and 149) it is called Miocene ; in others 
(pp. 29 and 30), Pliocene, and in the tabular view at the end of the 
volume it is labelled Post-Pliocene." "This confusion is equally apparent 
conoerning all other formations discussed. 
The report is deficient in local stratigraphic sections by which the 
discrepancies might be corrected. On the other hand, the parties who 
attempted to correlate and generalize the individual reports in the 
Appendix went to the other extreme, and reduced the nomenclature to 
a compact but an illogical arrangement. In general, the descriptive 
portions of the report are fair, but its conclusions concerning the classi- 
fieation, sequence, and age of the rocks leave the reader in a state of 
confusion. 
We cannot point out all of these discrepancies ; a comparison of the 
three summaries given in different parts of the volume will sufficiently 
exhibit them.? The chief confusion resulted from the attempt of those 
who wrote the summaries to include the various formations of the local 
observers under certain broad generic terms, such as the “White” 
or “Yellow” limestones, whereby the whole succession and age of 
these rocks, whose correct interpretation is most essential to an under- 
Standing of the geological history of the island and the Antilles, was 
confused. 
These errors resulted from erroneously correlating the Eocene Yellow 
limestones with the Miocene (old usage) Bowden beds. Tho former 
occur at the base of the entire series of White limestones, and the latter 
1 Jukes-Browne and Harrison, Jour. Geol. Soc. London, No. 190, Vol. XLVIII. 
p. 219. 
? Jamaican Report, pp. 128, 186-189, and table at end of volume. 
