q8 E. M. KINDLE 



one who admits that the factors controlling marine sedimentation 

 were essentially the same in Paleozoic and recent times, a Devonian 

 sea in which only calcareous sediments accumulated is a manifest 

 absurdity. We know of no continental or other seas in which 

 there are not a variety of types of sediment accumulating simultane- 

 ously. Papers which have undertaken to deal with this fauna in 

 a large way and weld its evidence into the new science of paleo- 

 geography have naturally been influenced by the fact that the only 

 faunas described from the Onondaga sea were limestone faunas. 

 Translated into the form of a paleogeographic map this class of 

 evidence taken alone gives us a sea whose outlines inclose only 

 limestone sediments. This was a serious defect in Professor 

 Charles Schuchert's first map of the Onondaga sea. 1 The shore- 

 lines given by it for the Onondaga sea in the central states inclosed a 

 sea from ioo to 300 miles in width. All of the known Onondaga 

 deposits included by the shorelines of the map are limestones. 

 The recently published map of the middle Onondaga by Professor 

 Schuchert 2 shows improvement in this respect, since it includes the 

 shales and argillaceous limestone bands holding the Onondaga 

 fauna which was discovered in central Pennsylvania by Charles 

 Butts and determined by the writer. The later map, however, 

 still gives us a conception of the Onondaga sea far from that which 

 the writer's recent studies in the Allegheny region appear to 

 demand. The writer's criticism, it may be stated here, is directed 

 primarily, not to Professor Schuchert's map, which incorporated 

 all of the positive evidence available at the time of its preparation, 

 but at the incompleteness of the evidence in a region where it might 

 be expected to be fairly complete. 



In order to ascertain to what extent recorded evidence and 

 opinion will enable us to reconstruct the shorelines of the Onondaga 

 sea within the limits of the eastern states so that they will appear 

 consistent and rational with reference to the character of the known 

 deposits of that sea, we may consider briefly the principal sources 



1 Charles Schuchert, "On the Faunal Provinces of the Middle Devonic of America 

 and the Devonic Coral sub-Provinces of Russia, with Two Paleographic maps," Am. 

 Geol. (1903), XXXII, 137-62, PI. 20. 



2 Charles Schuchert, " Paleogeography of North America," Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., 

 XX (iqio), 75. 



