INVESTIGATORS OF THE MEDINA 299 



Planorhis and Unios [also Ortlioceras], and with marine depositions 

 above and beneath them. . . . They occur below the fall in the banks 

 of Oak Orchard Creek at Medina. Mingled with these, we find a few 

 specimens of Lingula [cuneata], which just below are profusely dissemi- 

 nated through the rock. . . . All the larger layers are variegated with 

 stripes of different hue, oblique to the plane of stratification, dipping at 

 various angles and in different strata to opposite points of the compass. 

 . . . Other fine sections of variegated sandstone are furnished by the 

 Genesee River, north of Rochester, in the vicinity of the two lower falls" 

 (pages 166-168). 



Conrad's usage here of Niagara as a formation name is original, and 

 that he intended the name to stand is proven by the Third Annual Re- 

 port (1839, page 63), where in a table it is placed as "Niagara sand- 

 stone (red),'' and more especially by the Fourth Report (184:0, page 

 201). Under these circumstances, and according to the rules of forma- 

 tion nomenclature, it should have been adopted. In this case, it would 

 have applied through characterization rather to the Medina sandstone 

 than to the "red marl," now the Queenston, which was also .included in 

 his discussion of the section along the Genesee. In the Fifth Report 

 (1841, page 31), however, Conrad seems to have forgotten his term 

 Niagara sandstone, for here he writes "Red sandstone." In any case, to 

 revive at this date the term Niagara for the Medina would displace the 

 series term Niagara or Niagaran introduced by Yanuxem in 1842, and 

 as this would cause more confusion than otherwise the writer does not 

 care to make the substitution. 



James Hall.- — Conrad, after his first year as field geologist of the New 

 York State Survey, became the State Paleontologist, and James Hall, a 

 pupil of Eaton, was assigned Conrad's area in the western part of New 

 York. In the Second Report (1838, pages 294-297, 357) Hall writes of 

 the Medina, and the following extracts are taken from his report : 



^^Red Marl and Sandstone/' As may be seen above, Conrad had the 

 year before called this formation the "Red or Variegated Sandstone of 

 the Niagara River;" Hall now objects to the characterization "varie- 

 gated" as "being already appropriated, as designating a member of the 

 new red sandstone series. . . . Besides this, there are only a few of 

 the upper strata which are variegated." 



"The rock below the grayband is variegated to the depth of 20 or 30 

 feet, with gray or greenish gray spots and seams. Although this forma- 

 tion has been called sandstone, much the largest proportion of it is an 

 indurated marl, containing too little siliceous matter to entitle it to the 

 name of sandstone. On the Niagara River, wljere there are more than 



