42 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



fauna of Becraft mountain, the sole outlier of this stage on the east 

 of the Hudson river. This was followed in the year 1903 by two 

 important contributions, one by Stuart Weller on the Paleozoic rocks 

 and faunas of New Jersey, in which he discussed the sections at 

 the entrance of the western or Port Jervis-Otisville branch of the 

 divided Paleozoics of eastern New York and those further south 

 in his own state; another by Gilbert van Ingen and P. E. Clark on 

 the '' Disturbed Rocks in the Vicinity of Rondout, N. Y." [Mus. 

 Bui. 69] in which all the precise determinations were made by Mr 

 van Ingen. 



In 1905 Prof. H. W. Shimer published the paleontology of the 

 section at Port Jervis known as Trilobite mountain [Upper Siluric 

 and Lower Devonic Faunas of Trilobite Mountain, Orange County, 

 N. Y., Mus. Bui. 80]. 



Prof. George H. Chadwick has recently brought together some 

 results of further examinations made for the State Museum, of the 

 sections at Rondout and southward into Greene county, with the 

 special aim of elucidating the composition of the Port Ewen fauna. 

 Though these results have not been put in final form the author's 

 determinations are of very considerable interest. 



The Port Ewen beds, to rehearse briefly the history of this strati- 

 graphic unit, are a series of thin limestones and gray lime shales, 

 which, in the Appalachian region of New York and .New Jersey 

 lie immediately below the Oriskany silicious limestone and upon the 

 Becraft limestone, bear the lithic character of the New Scotland 

 lime shales and carry a large percentage of Helderberg fossils. It 

 is a division not recognized by the early geologists in their partition 

 of the " Lower Helderberg " and it is entirely absent from the suc- 

 cession west of Schoharie. Its earliest recognition as a definite 

 unit was by Prof. W. M. Davis in 1882 who termed these rocks 

 whose position he determined as above the Becraft limestone, the 

 ** Upper shaly beds " contrasting them in this designation with the 

 " Catskill or Delthyrls shaly limestone " below. Professor Davis 

 did not attempt to delimit these beds and did actually, according to 

 Professor Chadwick, include in his division some part of the 

 " Upper Pentamerus limestone." The writer in a joint publication 

 with Professor Schuchert [Science, Dec. 15, 1899], recognizing the 

 distinct unit character of these strata termed them the " King'ston 

 beds," later substituting for this term, which proved to have been 

 employed by the Canadian geologists for a quite different formation, 

 the name Port Ezven beds from their exposure near Port Ewen 



