PRIMORDIAL FAUNA AND POINT LEVI FOSSILS. 291 
been generically identified with Bohemian forms ;* and the prevailing 
opinion, sanctioned, as I have understood by Mr. Barrande, was that 
the primordial fauna had not been discovered in this country, until 
the re-discovery of the Paradoxides Harlani, at Braintree, Mass. The 
fragmentary fossils published in vol. I., Paleontology of New York, 
and similar forms of the so-called Taconic System, were justly regarded 
as insufficient to warrant any conclusions. It then became a question 
for paleontologists to decide, whether determinations founded on a 
physical section in a disturbed and difficult region of comparatively 
small extent, were to be regarded as paramount to determinations 
founded on a distance in the line of strike of five or six hundred 
miles ; and those of Sir William Logan over nearly as great an extent 
from Vermont to Gaspé. 
It is not possible for me, at this moment, to give the time necessary 
for a full discussion of this most important subject. In presenting 
these few facts in this form, I am far from doing it in the spirit of 
cavilling, or as an expression of distrust in any direction. It is plain 
that the case is not met in Mr. Barrande’s plan of successive Trilobitic 
faunee ; and the facts yet brought out do not serve to clear up the 
difficulty. It is evident that there is an important and perplexing 
question to be determined,—one that demands all the wisdom and 
sagacity of the most earnest inquirers, and one which calls for the 
application of all our knowledge in stratigraphical geology and in 
palzeontology ;—one in which codperation, good will and forbearance 
are required from every one, to harmonize the conflicting facts as they 
are now presented. The occurrence of so many types of the second 
fauna in the rocks at Point Levi, associated with a smaller number of 
established primordial types, offers us the alternative of regarding 
these strata as of the second stage, with the reappearance of primor- 
dial types in that era, or of bringing into the primordial zone several 
genera heretofore regarded as beginning their existence in the second 
stage: in either case, so far as now appears, conflicting with the 
scheme of Mr, Barrande in reference to the successive faune of 
‘Trilobites as established in Bohemia and in the rest of Europe. 
For myself I can say, that no previously expressed opinion nor any 
artificial combinations of stratigraphy previously adopted” by me, 
shall prevent me from meeting the question fairly and frankly. I 
* The glabelle of small trilobites undistinguishable from Conocephalus occur in the 
Potsdam sandstone near Trempaleau, Wisconsin, on the Mississippi river. 
