32 



THE DEVONIAN AND CARBONIFEROUS. 



[BULL. 80. 



tion of Amos Eaton, viz, the covering " of the western country and the 

 back and upper parts of New York with Secondary rocks." Yanuxem 

 found them, by their fossils, to belong to the Transition, and remarked : 

 "The analogy or identity of rocks I determine by their fossils in the 

 first instance and by their position and mineralogical characters in the 

 second or last instance. 77 He mentioned instances of such determina- 

 tions in regard to certain rocks of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 

 which he identified with the " limestones of Trenton Falls by the gen- 

 era of the fossils,'' and recognized that they are different from the rocks 

 lying above the Coal Measures. This appears to be the first, or at 

 least one of the very earliest, expressions in American literature of the 

 principle underlying the new school of geologic correlation which soon 

 after took the place of the Wernerian school. 



To show how the errors of the system of Werner led to mistakes of 

 identity, it ma,y be noticed that Eaton's determination of the rocks of 

 western New York, etc., as beiongiug to the " secondary rocks'' of his 

 classification, appears to be influenced by the term "floetz" of the 

 Wernerian nomenclature, which applied to these rocks. 



In 1830 James O. Morse published an article l in which is an illustra- 

 tion of the arguments used for defending the Wernerian system. The 

 author referred to the doubt which had been expressed as to the iden- 

 tification of certain rocks with the Greywacke, and argued as follows: 



Prof. Jameson describes Greywacke as composed of sand connected together by a 

 basis of clay slate, and miunte inspection of the rock of these regions will convince 

 any one that our Greywacke has these component parts. 



Prof. Amos Eaton made some " Observations on the coal formations 

 in the State of New York in connection with the great coal beds of 

 Pennsylvania." 2 In this article he recognized four distinct coal forma- 

 tions in the United States : First, " the genuine Anthracite or Glance 

 coal," in the Transition Argillite, Newport, Rhode Island, and Worces- 

 ter, Massachusetts; second, "coal destitute of bituminous matter," not 

 true anthracite, but what he calls "Anasphaltic coal," occurring in slate 

 rock, lowest of the second series, which he identifies with the greatest 

 Coal Measures of Europe, Pennsylvania, Carbondale, Lehigh, Lacka- 

 waxan, and Wilkes Barre; third, the "bituminous coal" proper, in slate 

 rock of the lowest of the upper Secondary rocks, Tioga, Lycoming, etc., 

 Pennsylvania; fourth, "Lignite coal," as seen at the south shore of the 

 Bay of Amboy, in New Jersey. The first or "Anthracite coals" are 

 represented by slates which he traced from Canada to Orange County, 

 New York, but the coal never occurs in seams thicker than an inch. 

 The third, " bituminous coal," Eaton traced from Pennsylvania to 

 Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, and the coal seams, he said, were not over 

 2 inches in thickness. It is said to "rest on what the English call Car- 

 boniferous limestone." This " Carboniferous limestone " is plainly the 

 Tully limestone, and the " Coal Measures " above are the Genesee shale. 



'Observations on the Greywacke region of the State of New York ; Albany Institute Trans., vol 1, 

 pp. 84, 85. 

 2 Trans, of the Albany Institute, vol. 1., pp. 126-130. 



