76 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 3. 



Sandstone Bocks of Connecticut River,' by John 

 C. Warren, M. D., President of the Boston 

 Society of Natural Historj^ 



Prof. W. B. Eogers, at a meeting of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, June 20, 



1855, spoke of the discover jr of the fern 

 Clathropteris in the ' Connecticut River 

 Sandstone.' 



The use of the name Connecticut River 

 Sandstone as applied to the rocks in ques- 

 tion seems to have been universal among 

 the members of the Boston Society of Nat- 

 ural History in the fifties, and it is applied 

 as a matter of course in the index in Vols. 

 v., VI., VII., etc. Mr. T. T. Bouve also 

 uses the expression prior to 1855. 



A sufficient number of citations have now 

 been made to prove the frequent application 

 of the term Connecticut River Sandstone to 

 the Triassic terranes before the proposal of 

 W. C. Redfield in 1856 to apply the designa- 

 tion of Newark to the same. Others could 

 be added. But I will in the next place call 

 attention to the fact that no one had followed 

 Redfield's suggestion till 1889, a period of a 

 third of a century, until Mr. I. C. Russell 

 proposed to revive the name of Newark. 

 Every American geologist by his silence in- 

 dicated his disapproval of the suggestion. 

 Furthermore, the use of the expression Con- 

 necticut had become pronounced. In fact, its 

 use, coupled with the rejection of Newark, is 

 sufficient to establish the usage of the former 

 without any regard to the usage previous to 



1856. I will cite a few instances of its use. 

 The catalogue of the Massachusetts State 

 Cabinet in 1859, the Ichnology in 1858, the 

 map of Hampshire county, 1860, and the 

 title of Dr. Deane's book in 1861, belong to 

 this category. ^. D. Rogers, in the Geologj^ 

 of Pennsylvania, 1858, prefers the term 

 ' older Mesozoic,' biit certainly rejects the 

 use of Newark, as he makes no reference to 

 it, and uses the following expressions : ' The 

 vegetable fossils in the Connecticut sand- 

 stone ;' ' the organic remains in the Connec- 



ticut red sandstone.' A title, ' Red Sand- 

 stones of the Connecticut Valley.' Roswell 

 Field ' made a verbal communication on the 

 footmarks of the Connecticut river sand- 

 stones ' before the Boston Society of Natural 

 History, June 6, 1860. In 1859, at the 

 Springfield meeting of the A. A. A. S., he 

 discusses the ornithichnites of the ' sand- 

 stone of the Connecticut valley.' This 

 paper was reprinted the following j'ear in 

 the American Journal of Science. 



Prof 0. C. Marsh presents in a section il- 

 li;strating the occurrence of vertebrate life 

 in America the name of Connecticut river beds 

 which includes all the Atlantic areas. This 

 has been printed with his 1877 address be- 

 fore the A. A. A. S., the third edition of 

 Dana's Manual of Geology, 1880, the mono- 

 graph on the Dinocerata, 1885, etc. 



Prof. Joseph Le Conte in his Elements of 

 Geology, 1878, and later editions describes 

 the eastern Jura-Trias under the head of 

 Connecticut river valley sandstone. 



Prof J. P. Lesley in C 4 of Second Penn- 

 sjdvania Survey, p. 179, 1883, says, "Amer- 

 ican geologists now write habitually of the 

 Triassic red sandstone of the Connecticut A' al- 

 ley and of North Carolina." Although the 

 Newark area was through Pennsylvania he 

 prefers to select the localit^y name fi"om 

 either of the other principal areas. There 

 are two references to the want of acceptance 

 of the term Newark. I had the pleasure of 

 attending Prof J.- D. Dana's course of lec- 

 tures on Geology at Yale College in 1856. 

 I noted that he then mentioned the fact 

 that Mr. Redfield had proposed the name of 

 of Newark for the American Trias. But 

 he has never used the name in any publica- 

 tion, evidently for good reasons. In a 

 sketch of the Geology of Massachusetts 

 with map in Walling's Official Atlas, 1871, 

 the following is printed, written bj^ myself: 

 " W. C. Redfield proposed the name of 

 Newark sandstones for the group; but be- 

 sides being inappropriate, it was of later 



