williams.] AMOS EATON. 33 



Eaton identified the Onondaga Salt group and the Medina sandstone 

 and shales, and Clinton rocks, probably, with the English " Saliferous" 

 and underlying " Millstone grit," and in accordance with the English 

 precedent coal was supposed to lie below these. He believed that 

 boring at Gasport, G miles east of Lockport, which at the surface was 

 274 feet higher than the surface of Lake Ontario, would reveal the Coal 

 Measures at 000 feet below the surface, and he was so confident that he 

 even suggested that legislative aid be furnished for boring down to this 

 coal. And again he says : l " And it may be stated that if coal is not 

 found beneath the Saliferous rock, which is more than 200 miles iu ex- 

 tent, it will be truly a geological curiosity which has no parallel on the 

 Eastern continent ; but we find many deviations in America from the 

 geological maxims which seem to be established in Europe." 



This mistake of the first of American teachers of geology of that time 

 in supposing that coal would be found below the Middle Silurian rocks 

 is the legitimate outgrowth of the imperfection of the Wernerian sys- 

 tem. The supposition that Saliferous rocks occupy a particular place 

 in a scale of strata was not Prof. Eaton's fault ; he followed the English 

 and they the German school iu this, and it was not due to the ignorance 

 of the uneducated that attempts were made to find coal in New York 

 State for years after this, but it was due to the ignorance of the best 

 geologists of the time as to the right means of correlating rock equiva- 

 lents across the Atlantic. 



In 1830 Amos Eaton wrote a short article 2 entitled " Geological Pro- 

 dromus." He announced that he intended to demonstrate that " all geo- 

 logical strata are arranged in five analagous series, and that each series 

 consists of three formations, viz : the Carboniferous, Quartzose, and 

 Calcareous." He referred to BakewelFs classification, and this idea is 

 evidently a modification of the notion that strata were arranged in 

 recurring suites of formations, a notion which was brought out in the 

 later development of geology, in the theory of " circles of sedimenta- 

 tion," of which Dr. J. S. Newberry is the most conspicuous exponent. 



Eaton particularizes in the article referred to, saying that he intends 

 to show that " the Lehigh or Lackawannock coal * * * is embraced 

 in the Second Grauwacke, Secondary, and that the Tioga coal is em- 

 braced in the Third Grauwacke or Upper Secondary of Bakewell and 

 others" ; and in this latter position, the Third Grauwacke, he mentions 

 as belonging to the u thin layers of coal at Ithaca, on Seneca Lake, and 

 Lake Erie shores." 3 



This error of Eaton's in identifying the rocks of Ithaca, Cayuga Lake, 

 and westward to Lake Erie with the " Third Grauwacke," placing them 

 above the Blossburg coal of Pennsylvania, was not corrected until sev- 

 eral years later, when the study of fossils clearly revealed the fact that 

 the rocks belonged below the Carboniferous. 



»Am. Jour. Sci., p. 130. « Ibid., vol. 17, p. 63, dated Troy, July 28, 1829. «Ibid.. p. 28, 



Bull. 80 3 



