FOURTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I907 4I 



St Lawrence gulf region. The work has progressed more slowly 

 than could have been anticipated largely because of the great diffi- 

 culties involved ir executing the plates in accordance with the 

 accepted standard of our lithography. The first volume of this 

 memoir covering especially the geology and paleontology of the 

 Gaspe region of Canada has stood complete in type for a year await- 

 ing the production of these plates. The illustrative matter is now 

 finished and it will be possible to distribute this part of the work 

 within a short time. Meanwhile the second part has gone to press. 

 This second volume is concerned with these faunas in their develop- 

 ment in New Brunswick and Maine and particularly recounts the 

 aspects and character o^ the faunas in New York. During the past 

 year a very significant addition to the Oriskany faunas in this State 

 has been made by the discovery in Orange county along the eastern 

 limb of the Skunnemunk mountain syncline of a considerable de- 

 velopment of this horizon in which the preservation of the fossils 

 is instructive and the species full of interest, as many have been 

 seen for the first time, others mark the first appearance in this State 

 of forms recorded from more eastern localities. 



When Professor Hall was elaborating the paleontology of the 

 Helderberg and Oriskany formations the development of these rocks 

 in the Appalachian region of New York south of the Helderberg 

 mountains did not contribute materially to his stores. The outcrops 

 in this region had been delineated with approximate accuracy by 

 Mather but in all his paleontological work in New York, Hall 

 seldom got far away from the undisturbed rocks of the central and 

 western districts of the State to which he was early wedded. Work 

 was later done in this Appalachian region by N. H. Darton of the 

 United States Geological Survey (which can not be regarded as mak- 

 ing any advance in accuracy upon that done 50 years before by 

 Lieutenant Mather) and by Dr Heinrich Ries, who constucted a 

 map and report of Orange county recording interesting data in re- 

 gard to details of stratigraphy without attempting close analyses 

 on the basis of paleontology. In the instructive but involved sec- 

 tions entangled in Appalachian folding the arenaceous deposits of 

 the Lower Dcvonic have generally passed as " Oriskany " and the 

 calcareous bef!s beneath as " Lower Helderberg," a discrimination 

 w'hich is no longer accurate or arlequatc. In late years the regions 

 have been given careful stady at certain points and the succession 

 of the faunas closely analyzed. Perhaps the first of these eflforts 

 was that made by the writer to portray the character of the Oriskany 



