June 30, 1893.J 



SCIENCE. 



359 



Stereulia drakei. It will be apparent to everyone acquainted 

 with the fossils of the Cretaceous that those enumerated belong 

 only to Cretaceous strata." 



It would have been well if Mr. Cummins had given the names 

 of the "parties," as he calls the experts, for in no other part of 

 geology is it so important to know the paleontologists who deter- 

 mined the fossils. When in the field in 1853 I determined the 

 Gryphcea as the Qryphcea dilatata, or a variety of it, of the Ox- 

 fordian of Europe, and the Ostrea as a Ostrea marshii of the Lower 

 Oolite of the Jura. After my return from the field, I submitted 

 my fossils to Louis Agassiz, Alcide d'Orbigny, de Verneuil, 

 d'Archiac, Pictet, etc. M. de Verneuil, an excellent paleontolo- 

 gist, as well known in America as in Europe, reported on my fossils 

 before the National Academy of Science of France, and called them 

 Qryphcea dilatata and Ostrea marshii; and he refers the Tucum- 

 ■cari strata to the Jura. Finally, I have given long descriptions 

 and excellent figures of the two fossils in my volume, entitled 

 " Geology of North America." and also in Bulletin Societe Geolo- 

 gique de France, vol. xii., IbSS. So my two fossils had received 

 all the attention possible, and can be regarded with safety as cor- 

 rectly determined. 



Let us see now what guarantee we have as to the correctness of 

 the determination by Mr. Cummins and his " various parties for 

 determination" of his fossils, as he calls his anonymous paleon- 

 tological assistants. The value of determination of fossils de- 

 pends much on the name of the paleontologist employed. To be 

 sure, anyone, even the greatest paleontologist, makes mistakes ; 

 but it is generally admitted that they are less liable to errors than 

 others. Mr. Cummins is unknown as a practical paleontologist. 

 Until three years ago, he was regarded as a collector of fossils in 

 Texas who has supplied two paleontologists, Messrs. Cope and 

 C A. While. It this case Mr. Cope has nothing to do, for all the 

 fossils are invertebrates. Mr. White has charge of the Mesozoic 

 invertebrate fossils at the U. S. National Museum, and Mr. Cum- 

 mins, in a letter to me, says that he did send his Tucumcari 

 fossils to Washington for determination. So it may be assumed 

 that Mr. White is one of the experts, who has agreed to the determi- 

 nations made by Mr. Cummins. Now Mr. White, during twenty 

 years, has constantly coofouoded, in all his paleontological me- 

 moirs, the Qryphcea dilatata, var. tucumcarii, with the Qryphcea 

 pitcheri; and more, he has said, in some of his papers, that the 

 Lower Cretaceous of Europe has no representative in North 

 America. 



As regards my other fossil, the Ostrea marshii, which, according 

 to Messrs. Cummins and White, "is in reality Ostrea subovata, 

 Shumard." I shall quote from a letter of Mr. Cummins to me, 

 dated Feb. 35, 1893 : '' I have compared the Tucumcari specimens 

 with 0. subovata, Shumard, and do not believe they are the 

 same." And I shall tell what occurred in my house during the 

 last visit of Mr. White, in 1884. Mr. White took up a fossil on 

 my chimney mantel-piece, looked at it attentively, and exclaimed : 

 " What a beautiful Cretaceous fossil; it is the most perfect I have 

 ever seen from Texas." My answer was : " The fossil is not Cre- 

 taceous ; it is the typical Ostrea marshii, picked up, with my own 

 hand, in the Lower Oolite of the Jura Mountains at Frickberg, in 

 Argovia, Switzerland." Every one can draw his conclusions as to 

 Mr. White's ability to determine specimens of the Qryphcea dilatata 

 and Ostrea marshii types. 



I have said already before in another paper, and repeat it, 

 that it is impossible to find the typical Qryphcea pitcheri (I mean 

 the one described and figured in my " Geology of North Amer- 

 ica," Plate iv.. Figs. 5 and 6) in the same bed with the Qryphcea 

 dilatata, var. tucumcarii, and the Ostrea marshii of Pyramid 

 Mount, on the Tucumcari area. 



As to the Exogyra texana quoted by Mr. Cummins, it is an in- 

 correct determination of a fossil having some distant affinity of 

 forms. The four or five other fossils in Mr. Cummins's list, are, 

 at all events, not sufficiently characteristic, even if properly de- 

 termined, for " the conclusion that the beds are Cretaceous." 



2. As to the stratigraphic position of the Jurassic strata of the 

 Tucumcari, it is so clear and so striking that a few words will 

 dispose once more of the question. At the Tucumcari there is no 

 discordance of stratification or interruption of any sort between 



the Trias beds below and the Jurassic beds above. It is a con- 

 tinuous series, with most striking differences in the lithology and 

 paleontology between what is Trias and what I call the Jura. 

 How far those deposits extended eastward and southward, it is 

 difficult to say in the present condition of our limited knowledge 

 of the geology of Texas. Very likely they did extend eastward 

 all over the Indian country of the Commanches, Kioways, 

 Kichais, and Delawares, as far as near Topofki Creek and Dela- 

 ware Mount; southward they went as far as the upper part of the 

 Trinity River basin, and covered all the upper Brazos and upper 

 Colorado Rivers of Texas. After their upheaval above the sea, at 

 the end of the Jura period, erosions on a great scale occurred and 

 swept away all the Upper Trias and a part of the Middle Trias to 

 such an extent as to reduce the plateau of the Jura Trias nearly 

 to the actual Llano Estacado, obliging it to recede from the vicin- 

 ity of Topofki Creek several hundred miles westward. Then over 

 the eroded part of the Middle Trias, at Fort Washita, at Comet 

 Creek, and at the Great Band of the Canadian River, an arm of 

 the Lower Cretaceous sea, extended in a narrow strip, as a sort 

 of gulf, which extended as far north as southern Kansas, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Cragin's discoveries. 



In that gulf, strata, mainly of limestone, were deposited ; and 

 at Comet Creek, on the Washita River, where I saw it in 1853, 

 those limestone rocks are a perfect mass of Qryphcea pitcheri, 

 with some Caprotina texana at the base of the formation. The 

 division of the Texas Cretaceous, to which those " Qryphcea 

 pitcheri limestones "belong, has been called since " Fredericksburg 

 Division," and are the homotaxis or equivalent of the Lower 

 Neocomian of Europe, as I have always said ever since. 



Mr. Cummins says there is no disagreement between him and 

 Mr. Hill as to the age of the strata of the Tucumcari, which are 

 referred by them to the " Denison beds" of the "Washita Divi- 

 sion ; " that is to say, a group of strata far above, and consequently 

 younger, than the Comet Creek beds with Caprotina and Qryphcea 

 pitcheri. So, according to Messrs. Cummins and Hill, the Tu- 

 cumcari strata, which they call " Denison Cretaceous beds," were 

 deposited in perfect concordance on the top of the Upper Trias, 

 and long after the deposit of the Fredericksburg Division at Comet 

 Creek. A material impossibility, against all stratigraphic and 

 paleontologic i^rinciplesof formation in aflat country overimmense 

 plains; for there is no doubt that the Neocomian strata of Comet 

 Creek, deposited in interrupted discordance over the strata of the 

 Middle Trias, are younger than the strata of Tucumcari, deposited 

 in perfect concordance of stratification, without any interruption, 

 over the uppermost part of the Upper Trias. 



What a strange story, unique in the annals of geographical 

 geology. A description of the Tucumcari area, made simply 

 during a difficult and even then dangerous exploration, with all 

 the proofs, stratigraphic, paleontologic, and lithologic, has stirred 

 up an opposition without precedent as I'egards its long duration. 

 Now — June, 1893 — it is forty years since I started from Boston 

 for my exploration by the thirty-fifth parallel, for a Pacific rail- 

 road from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean; and, al- 

 though one concession has been made in my favor, by almost all 

 my adversaries — the correctness of my reference of the lower beds 

 of the Tucumcari to the Trias — the opposition continues, with a 

 degree of intensity and, I am sorry to say, of unfairness never 

 equalled. 



Mr. R. T. Hill, after his two visits at the Tucumcari, in 1888 

 and 1891, has not yet published anything reliable, only a few con- 

 tradictory statements, without proofs and against plain strati- 

 graphic and paleontologic facts. 



Mr. A. Hyatt, after a thorough exploration of two months' 

 duration of a part of the Tucumcari area in 1889, asked me to 

 look over with him his quite extensive collection of fossils, and 

 placed before my eyes his detailed sections of Monte Revuelto. I 

 did not see a single fossil in his collection which can be called a 

 Cretaceous fossil ; when, on the contrary, the Gryphoa and Am- 

 monites had all the most indisputable characters of Jurassic fos- 

 sils. 



For some unknown reasons, not only the report of his explora- 

 tion has not been published, but even his administrative report as 

 head of a special exploration of the U. S. Geological Survey, in 



