AMERICAN GEOLOGY EATONIAN ERA, 1820-1829. 253 



the .same formation. This method of correlation did not wholly dis- 

 appear among American workers for many years, although Marcou 

 was probably its latest ardent apostle. Eaton himself made an 

 attempt to break away from it in his later work, as will be noted. 



In the work under discussion the crystalline limestone or granular 

 limestone and quartz, calcareous and granular quartz, and metalliferous 

 limestone of the first edition were regarded as all belonging to one 

 and the same stratum, but the position of this limestone, as shown 

 near the east line of Danbury, Connecticut, confused him. 



Here the layers dip to the west; but in West Stockbridge and Alford they gen- 

 ally dip to the east, though there seems to be no conformity in their direction. 

 Had some force, applied at the eastern edge, raised these mountain masses from the 

 horizontal toward the vertical position, leaving some inclined to the east and forcing 

 others beyond a vertical position, they would have presented their present inclination. 



This is the first suggestion of anything resembling an overturned 

 fold which had thus far been made. He was correct in his observa- 

 tions, but the science had not sufficiently advanced to enable him to 

 realize the possibilities. It will be noted, too, that he was working 

 in a region, the correct interpretation of which has been a source of 

 dispute for nearly three-quarters of a century. The glacial drift was, 

 as in the first edition of his work, still classed as alluvial, and the 

 materials composing Long Island and the coastal plain were regarded 

 as of a common origin. 



Eaton made use of Le Due and Jameson's awkward name of Geest to 

 include the "most universal of all strata,'"' which was found occupying 

 "every inch of dry land which is neither naked rock nor covered with 

 alluvion," and the character of which "is generally indicated by the 

 rock upon which it lies and by those which have recently disappeared." 

 Although thus denned, in his attempt to outline its distribution he 

 failed to discriminate between the true residual material and that 

 which is drift. 



What he had to sa}' on the subject of organic relics or fossils was 

 merely an adaptation from Martin's Systema reliquiorum. He classi- 

 fied these relics under two heads, petrifactions and conservatives. The 

 petrifactions or substitutions, as he sometimes called them, were "those 

 relics which are entirely made up of mineral substances, which have 

 graduall} 7 run into the places occupied by organized bodies, as those 

 bodies decayed, and assumed their forms." The conservatives or pres- 

 ervations, on the other hand, were " those relics or parts thereof which 

 still consist of the very same substances which originally composed the 

 living, organized being." 



These relics were named by annexing the termination Uthos, a stone, 

 to the scientific name of the living organism; as, for instance, a fossil 

 fish would be ichthyolithos, though the terminology in English he 

 often modified from lithos to lite. Adopting this nomenclature, he 



