AMEKICAN GEOLOGY THE TACONIC QUESTION. 



(375 



Newberry, on the other hand, would retain the name Taconic as a 

 group name for one of the minor subdivisions of the Upper Cambrian, 

 while Alexander Winchell, from a perusal of the literature only, would 

 retain the name for those roeks underlying the Cambrian and retain- 

 ing the primordial fauna (JParadosddes). The Canadian geologists, 

 Dawson and Selw}n, both regarded the term as useless and unneces- 

 sary, while H. S. Williams and Joseph Le Conte recommended that it 

 be dropped entirely, owing to the existing conflict of opinion. 



The committee recommended that all the strata lying between the 

 Devonian and Archean be divided into three great groups, the Silu- 

 rian, Cambrian, and Taconic, the last named to be subdivided as below: 



As above noted, this report of the committee was not adopted, and 

 it is probably due more to the work of Dana and Walcott than to all 

 others that the term to-day tinds no place except historically in 

 American geolog}\ 



As to the justice of this decision, there may be some question, par- 

 ticularly when one recalls the fact that Mr. Walcotfs own studies 

 later showed the existence of his Olenellus (Georgian) fauna below 

 rather than above the Paradoxides (Acadian) beds. 



When one considers further the condition of the science at the time 

 Emmons first proposed the system and the conditions under which he 

 labored, without satisfactory maps, it is obviously unfair to hold him 

 to as strict an account as would be justifiable with reference to the 

 later workers. Even were it true, as stated, that there is to-day "no 

 known stratum of rod' in the Taconic range" that is of the geological 

 age assigned it by Doctor Emmons/' and even though it were also true 



"Emmons's granular quartz and the lower part of the Stockbridge limestone are 

 to-day regarded as older than the Potsdam, as a part of the Lower Cambrian. 



