- Remarks on Professor Eaton's Communication, 151 



tlon previously suggested by our countryman Mr. School- 

 craft, and explained by Mr. Eatnn in his Index to the 

 Geology of the Northern States. We would not be thought 

 to have done any inju-tice to either of these gentlennen, 

 whose scientific efforts we approve and resppct. Yet we 

 cannot plead ignorance in this case : for Mr. Eaton's work 

 was in our hands and we were familiar with its contents. 

 We frankly confess then, that we did not refer to the views 

 of this gentleman on this subject, because we were not sat- 

 isfied of their utility, and we doubled whether they would at 

 all relieve the difficulties under which the subject laboured. 

 The views of Mr. Eaton we say : for we do not definiely 

 know what were Mr. Schoolcraft's views on the subject. 

 Mr Eaton does not give them in his work; but says that 

 Mr. Schoolcraft "proposes to subdivide the stratum (allu- 

 vium) according to the relative ages of the different kinds, 

 and assigns distinctive characteristics for each kind " He 

 further says, that Mr. Schoolcraft makes a threefold divi- 

 sion of alluvium : but instead of giving us the ' distinctive 

 characteristics' of this division, he tells us he is inclined to 

 consider it as ' hardly tenable', and says, " I shall attempt 

 a twofold division upon this plan," comprehending in that 

 twofold division all that stratum which Mr. Schoolcraft 

 refers to thee divisions. Our neglect of Mr. Schoolcraft 

 then consisted in omittins to mention that be bad suggested 

 a division of alluvium, althouj^h we were ignorant of its 

 nature. But we had no idea that Mr. Conybeare was the 

 first person who had made a division of alluvium : for 

 although Mr. Eaton states in his ' Index, Sic' published in 

 1820, that " hitherto there has been no subdivision of this 

 stratum, founded upon the relative ages of different layers," 

 we think he mus' have forgotten the geest of Kirwan, which 

 Prof Jameson in his notes to Cuvier's Theory of theEarth, 

 (published in this country in 1818,) thus defines: "By 

 geest is understood the alluvial matter which is spread over 

 the surface both of the hilly and low country, and appears 

 to have been formed the last time the waters of the ocean 

 stood over the surface of the earth.'' Prof. Buckland also, 

 in his tabular arrangement of the strata of England, pub- 

 lished as early as 1818, (we do not know the exact time,) 

 and copied into Rees' Cyclopedia in 1819, divides alluvium 

 into ' diluvian detritus,^ or " fragments of neighbouring 



