142 THE DEVONIAN AND CARBONIFEROUS. [bull. 80. 



of Murchison. 1 And the identification of the fossils of the Cliff' lime- 

 stone in Iowa, Falls of Ohio, and Illinois, with species of the Onondaga, 

 Corniferous limestones, Marcellns shale, and Hamilton group of New 

 York, was strictty in accordance with the statement above quoted. 



I find no evidence in this report of the recognition of the Black 

 shale. 



The name " Subcarbonifeious limestone," thus introduced by Owen 

 in the Indiana reports of 1839, was again used in the second edition oi 

 the " Mineral Lands," and in his final report of 1852 was adopted as the 

 name for the lower division of the Carboniferous rocks of Iowa. Owen 

 considered it the equivalent of the Yoredale series and the Lower Scar 

 limestone of the English geologists. 



As we shall see elaborated beyond, Swallow retained the old naim 

 " Carboniferous or Mountain limestone w in the Missouri reports of 1S55. 

 Hail in the Iowa reports of 1858 retained " Carboniferous limestone.' 

 In 1859, in volume 3 of the Paleontology of New York, " Great Carbon- 

 iferous limestone of the Mississippi Valley w is used. Owen in the Ken- 

 tucky report of 1856 continued to use " Subcarboniferous limestone," 

 and Worthen in the Illinois reports of 1866 and later used Owen's 

 name »' Subcarboniferous." Thus the name became established in 

 American literature. Not only is it inappropriate for the purpose to 

 which it is applied, but it is evident that it was introduced as an ex- 

 pression of confusion and dissatisfaction with the correlation at- 

 tempted. It probably never would have appeared except for the erro- 

 neous correlation of the u Cliff limestone " of the Mississippi Valley 

 with the " Scar limestone " of England. " Scar limestone" was Sedg- 

 wick's name for the Carboniferous limestone of the Lake district and 

 Yorkshire; " Cliff" was the American name for "Scar," but the "Cliff 

 limestone" of the Mississippi Valley was found to be, some of it cer- 

 tainly, not Carboniferous, and all of it below the coal-bearing strata, 

 and the prefix " Sub " was attached to indicate these facts. 



Although we have come thoroughly to understand the application of 

 the name, the substitution of the Mississippian series for it will not, 

 it is believed, do violence to the honor of the early geologists or to the 

 rights ot the present and future geologists who will adopt the nomen- 

 clature best suiting their purposes. 



In 1847 I). D. Owen and J. G. Norwood published a paper entitled 

 " Researches among the Protozoic and Carboniferous rocks of Central 

 Kentucky, made during the summer of 1846." This was noticed in the 

 American Journal of Science. 



The reviewer remarked: 2 



Most if not all of the groups of rocks which occur in New York, from the Genesee 

 slate to the top of the Catskill range, are deficient or obscurely marked in the west, 

 and the Carboniferous rocks rest almost immediately on the schistose beds which 

 represent the Genesee slate; whilst our black slate, and the underlying shell bedsol 



1 See Geol., Fourth Dist. New York, p. 20. 2 Am. Jour. Sci., 2d ser., vol. 5, 1847, p. 2G9, 



