66 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



tion." ^ Lennox held that the " White Limestone of Jamaica appears 

 to have been deposited slowly and steadily in the bed of a tranquil sea, 

 during the period known to geologists as the Miocene." ^ Wall,^ 

 through his unfortunate error of mistaking the overlying Bowden yellow 

 marls for the underlying Cambridge yellow limestone, placed the whole 

 of the White Limestone above the Bowden beds now known to be of 

 late Oligocene (Miocene) age. Etheridge, Woodward, Jukes-Browne, 

 Harrison, Duncan, and others, misled by Wall's stratigraphic error, 

 accepted this conclusion. Etheridge stated that the White Limestones 

 were of Pliocene^ or Post-Pliocene^ age. Gabb,® upon the ground that 

 all the Jamaican white limestones were synchronous with the Post- 

 Pliocene coast limestone of San Domingo, wrongly correlated them 

 as follows: "The Coast formation of Santo Domingo is extensively 

 represented in most if not all the AVest Indian Islands. In Jamaica, as 

 the White Limestone, it covers more than three fourths of the island 

 and may be computed at 2,000 feet in thickness.""^ Sawkins first con- 

 sidered it as Miocene, but in the end of the book it is put down as Post- 

 Pliocene. Jukes-Browne and Harrison^ state: "With respect to the 

 age of the [Jamaican] White Limestone the reports of the surveyors are 

 inconsistent with one another ; in some ^ it is spoken of as Miocene, in 

 others ^^ as Pliocene, and in the Tabular View at the end of the volume 

 it is labelled ' Post-Pliocene.' Mr. Barrington Brown, however, to whom 

 we wrote on the subject, informs us that this last reference was a mis- 

 take ; that during the course of the Survey and before the fossils were 

 examined there was naturally much uncertainty with respect to its age, 

 but it was finally intended to class it as Pliocene, because it was found 

 to rest on a fossiliferous yellow limestone which was considered by Mr. 

 R. Etheridge to be of Miocene age, and probably late Miocene." The 

 same writers (Jukes-Browne and Harrison), after presenting much evi- 

 dence to sliow that these " Yellow Limestones " of Wall and Etheridge 

 — the Bowden beds — were of late Miocene age, and accepting the 

 erroneous deduction that the latter lay beneath instead of upon the 



1 Jamaican "Reports, p. 23. 2 Ibid., pp. 23 and 149. 



8 Quart. Jour. Gcol. Soc, Vol. XXI. p. G7. 



4 Jamaican Reports, pp. 307 and 342. 



^ Ibid., Tabular View at end of volume. 



° Geology of San Domingo, p. 110. 



'' Jamaican Reports, p. 307. 



8 Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. London, 1802, Vol. XL VIII. pp. 219, 220. 



' As on pp. 23 and 149, Jan)aican Reports. 



10 Ibid., pp. 129-301. 



