IO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
stones of Dutchess, Putnam, Westchester and New York counties 
are the metamorphosed equivalents of Cambro-Ordovician lime- 
stones: “After reviewing all the facts observed by others and 
myself, I have been led to the conclusion, that the limestones that 
are frequently crystalline, white and variegated marbles in the west- 
ern parts of Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in the 
eastern part of New York, from Mount Washington to the “ City 
of New York . . . ARE METAMORPHIC ROCKS; that they were 
originally the Mohawk limestone and calciferous sandstone.’ (p. 
464; italics are Mather’s.) 
This statement of Mather’s is probably the first recorded attempt 
to correlate the unmetamorphosed Cambro-Ordovician limestones 
(Wappinger) of the area just north of the Highlands with the highly 
metamorphosed, crystalline limestones of Putnam, Westchester and 
New York counties; an error in correlation that persists even to 
the present day. 
The 12 years succeeding the publication of Mather’s report were 
barren with respect to literature on the geology of the Highlands. 
In 1855, however, William Kitchell, who succeeded Rogers as state 
geologist of New Jersey, published his first annual report * in which 
the physical geography and the geology of Sussex county, New 
Jersey, is briefly discussed, and a few of the local occurrences of 
magnetite are described. He merely mentions the metamorphic 
rocks, calling them gneiss, hornblende slate and crystalline lime- 
stone, without further comment, and disposes of the igneous rocks 
just as briefly. Kitchell’s second report,? however, is much more 
comprehensive, especially with respect to the occurrence of the 
magnetite deposits and the description of the mines then in opera- 
tion. He did not speculate on the origin of the magnetite, but he 
did state very definitely that: “The geological formation of the 
highlands . . . is composed of sedimentary rocks e 
(that is, metamorphosed) which he divided into gneiss, various 
schists and crystalline limestone. 
In his third annual report *° Kitchell discussed the different ways 
in which magnetite ores occur in the district, and concluded that 
the magnetite ores were metamorphosed sediments, contemporaneous 
in origin with the rocks in which they occur. An opinion which 
8 Kitchell, William. First Annual Report of the Geological Survey of New 
Jersey for 1854; p. 28-38, New Brunswick, 1855. 
9 Kitchell, William. Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of 
New Jersey for 1855; New Brunswick, 1856. 
10 Kitchell, William. Third Annual Report of the Geological Survey of 
New Jersey for 1856; New Brunswick, 1857. 
