Jaxuaky If^, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



Silurian ami Devonian. It was not until 

 geologists found it ncci'ssaiy to specify the 

 smaller divisions that it was discovered 

 how convenient tiiey were. The first users 

 of names like Potsdam and Trenton did 

 not make formal announcements that here- 

 after a particular name would be applied 

 to a definite set of beds with special paleon- 

 tological characteristics. It was the • sand- 

 stone of Potsdam,' the ' limestone of Tren- 

 ton Falls,' enunciated almost apologeti- 

 cally. We would not to-day question the 

 validity of these early names because their 

 authors did not set them forth in their 

 perfection, like Minerva springing forth 

 from the brain of Jupiter. I find tlie sug- 

 gestion of Connecticut to have been made 

 by E. Hitchcock in his rejiort upon the 

 Geology of Massachusetts in 1833, page 209. 

 He says, ' the group which I denominate 

 new red saucktone in the Connecticut valley' 

 (the italics are mine). This was repeated 

 in the Final Rejjort, p. 441. Like his con- 

 temporarii'S he preferred the use of the Eu- 

 ropean term of Trias, New Red or sometimes 

 Liassic to the geographical one. We note 

 that the expression of new red sandstone in 

 the Connecticut valley is fully as definite 

 as the later one of sandstone of Potsdam. 

 This usage of Connecticut appears in all of 

 E. Hitchcock's papers, and he distinctly 

 included the terranes of New Jei-sej', Vir- 

 ginia and North Carolina. I quote later 

 samples of its use. In the Ichnologj^ of 

 New England, 18.58, page 20, may be found 

 the following heading descriptive of an ex- 

 tended discussion ; • 5. Conclusions as to 

 the Age and Equi\alency of the Connecti- 

 cut River Sandstone.' In 1859 he pub- 

 lished in the Report of the Secretarj' of the 

 Massachusetts Uoard of Agriculture a cata- 

 logue of the State Collection. The follow- 

 ing is the headingused descriptive of the spe- 

 cimens from this terrane : " Conxkcticut 

 RiVEU Sandstone. {Liassic and perhaps Tri- 

 amc and Permian nandstones and limetstones.)" 



In 1800 Messrs. II. and C. T. Smith, .'{oG 

 Pearl street. New York, published a wall 

 map of Hampshire county, Mas.sachusetts, 

 based upon the surveys of Henry F. Wall- 

 ing. Hundri-ds, perhaps thousands, of these 

 maps adorned the walls of houses belong- 

 ing to citizens of that county. Upon it 

 was placed a geological map of the county 

 by Edward Hitchcock, and in explanation 

 of the colors we have ' Connecticut River 

 Sandstone, Lower and Upper,' and the 

 words New Red or Trias do not appear at 

 all. Thus the usage of the name C<mnecti- 

 cut in the writings of this author has been 

 constant and has passed ft'om the emploj'- 

 ment of l)oth the Eluropean and local terms 

 conjointly to the use of the latter one ex- 

 clusively. 



Other earlier authors employed the geo- 

 graphical name in a geological sense. Thus 

 Lyell in his Travels. 1845, page 100, Vol. 2, 

 says ' the Connecticut deposits,' Dr. James 

 Deane constantly speaks of the Connecticut 

 river sandstone ; and in his final work upon 

 the footmarks, a quarto with 61 pages and 

 46 plates, published by Little, Brown & Co., 

 Boston, in 1861 , his title is 'A Memoir upon 

 the Fossil Footprints and other Impressions 

 of the Connecticut River Sandstone, by 

 James Deane, M. D.' 



Roderick Impey Murchison, in his anni- 

 versary address before the Geological Soci- 

 ety of London, 1843, page 107, etc., speaks 

 of the ' deposit in Connecticut ' and the 

 • ornithichnite and Paleoniscus beds of Con- 

 necticut.' 



Dr. John C. Warren, President of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, is re- 

 ported as having given ' an historical ac- 

 count of the science of Ichnology, particu- 

 larly as illusti-ated by the fossil Ibotprints 

 in the Connecticut River Sandstone;' Nov. 

 2, 1853, Proc. B. S. N. H., Vol. IV., p. 376. 

 Various remarks of his on these subjects 

 were printed in 1854 in a book entitled 

 'Pemarks on Sonte Possil Impressions in the 



