HILL: GEOLOGY OF JAMAICA. 13 



as a single formation under the vague head of the " Miocene." Further- 

 more, the precedent of not specifying the locahty from which the fossils 

 came was followed in all the subsequent paleontologic literature of 

 Guppy and others, and hy Dall,^ wlio referred the rocks of Jatnaica, 

 included by the others in the Miocene, to the Oligocene. 



Thus the true sequence of the Jamaican strata was confused in early 

 literature ; the proper place of the Cambridge beds (the true Yellow 

 limestones of the west), at the base of the White Limestone Series, 

 appeared for a brief moment, next to be obliterated by erroneous correla- 

 tion with the entirely different and higher Bowden beds of the east, and 

 all conception of the position and age of a greater part of the great 

 Wliite limestones which mostly lie between them was destroyed. This 

 confusion has become so confounded in the passing years that the present 

 state of knowledge to be derived from the literature is chaotic. Xot 

 only after reading the geologic literature of Jamaica, but after going 

 over the island with these reports in hand, the opinion already expressed 

 by others ^ is emphasized, that " clearly there are many interesting 

 questions in the geology of Jamaica which are awaiting further investi- 

 gation, and the mutual relations of these white marls and limestones is 

 not the least important of them." To straighten out this entanglement 

 will be our earnest endeavor. 



It is but justice to say concerning the volume of official reports, that, 

 despite their discrepancies, they are full of valuable uncorrelated data. 

 Although unintelligible to one who has not studied the island, we do not 

 hesitate, after two years of careful study of its pages and the localities 

 of which they treat, to say that by careful re-editing, including the 

 correlation of the observations on the various parishes under a uniform 

 and systematic nomenclature, and striking out much of the Appendix, 

 the volume could be made a valuable guidebook of Jamaican geology. 

 The writer appreciates the worth and value of the individual reports, 

 and acknowledges that they represent important steps in the progres- 

 sive research which contribute to the ultimate solution of the problems, 

 and that the following pages would have been impossible without 

 them. 



In view of the complications presented, and in the light of additional 

 knowledge in the present paper, the formations will be classified de novo, 

 with proper credit wherever possible for all previous determinations. 



1 Proc. U. S. National Museum, Vol. XIX., Washington, 1890. 



2 Jukes-Browne and Harrison, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, 1896, Vol. XLVIL 

 pp. 190, 221. 



