288 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



When one recalls the avidity with which each new suggestion is 

 seized upon by the scientists of to-day, it seems strange that . so 

 promising a field of investigation as was here thrown open should not 



have been immediately occupied. Nevertheless, it 

 Co™eia«on! P i t 82 t 8. was not until 1828 that an American geologist took up 



the matter with an apparently full appreciation of its 

 possibilities. In that year Dr. S. G. Morton, the paleontologist, read 

 before the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, from notes furnished 

 him by Lardner Vanuxem, what was probably the most important 

 paper of the year, relating to a possible subdivision of the heretofore 

 so-called alluvial or Tertiary deposits of the Atlantic coast. The most 

 important feature of this paper, as may be surmised, lay in its 

 announced recognition of the value of fossils for purposes of correla- 

 tion. With the exception of Prof. John Finch, already mentioned, 

 writers up to this time had very generally referred to these deposits 

 as belonging to a single formation, either alluvial or Tertiary, as the 

 case might be. Vanuxem here asserted for the first time the exist- 

 ence of both Secondary and Tertiary formations, and showed "that 

 the two formations may be at all times unequivocally identified by 

 their fossil remains." The relative geological position of the beds he 

 gave as below: 



-,, . .. . . (Vegetable mold 7 



Modern alluvial-^. .. 



[River alluvium o 



. , [White siliceous sand 5 



Ancient alluvial <_ . ,, . 



[Red earth 4 



| Beds of Ostreae I ., 



" "{Mass of limestone, buhrstone, sand, and clay [ 



Q , [Lignite 2 



Secondary L T . . ,, , , 



[Marl ot New Jersey 1 



In L828 Dr. C. T. Jackson, of Boston, in company with Francis 



Alger, published in the American Journal of Science a series of papers 



bearing on the mineralogy and geology of a part of Nova Scotia. 



These, although mainly of a mineralogical nature, con- 



Jackson and Alger's . • i * i • i j_i i i i 



work in Nova Scotia, tamed much material which at the time was valuable, 

 and were accompanied by a colored geological maps 

 This showed the distribution of the various geological formation, 

 (identified mainly on lithological grounds) of the northern half of the 

 peninsula. A broad belt of transition clay-slate was represented as 

 extending from the Gut of Canso to St. Marys Bay. This was bor 

 dered on the northeast by a narrow bed of alluvium, the immediate 

 border of the Bay of Fundy being occupied b} r trap rock or greenstone, 

 as it was then called. A wide band, of red and gray sandstone, alter- 

 nating with shale and carrying beds of coal, occupied the region south 

 of Minas Basin and all of the Cumberland County peninsula. This 

 sandstone was described in considerable detail, and from its fossil con- 

 tents was judged to be a secondary rock, although evidently older than 



