

williams.] KING, CHRISTY. 145 



t Below this limestone occurs a siliceous sandstone, from 40 to 100 feet 

 thick, which rests upon the second important coal deposit of Missouri 

 consisting of two beds, sometimes thinuing out to a single bed, resem- 

 bling very much the upper deposit near St. Louis. This is again 

 underlaid by another limestone, some two or three hundred feet thick, 

 and " of Devonian aspect," but with the majority of its fossils Carbon- 

 iferous. All that portion of the State lying northwest, north, and east 

 of the line starting on the western boundary of the State, near the 

 headwaters of Sac River ; thence northeasterly to the junction of the 

 Sac and Osage Rivers ; thence to Warsaw and northeasterly to the 

 Missouri River, a few miles west of Jefferson City to Salt River, is 

 classified as " Carboniferous." Prom thence the line runs south to the 

 Missouri River, to a point opposite our starting place. 



Mr. D. Christy, 1 in 1851, gave account of the Goniatite limestone of 

 Rockford, Indiana. The author, having sent a fewGoniatites from Rock- 

 ford to M. de Verneuil, was informed by him that they were " Carbonifer- 

 ous fossils," identical in age with the supposed Mountain limestone of 

 Belgium and England. Dr. D. D. Owen, who had also presented him 

 with some Goniatites from this locality, had reported that they came 

 from the Black slate beneath the Cliff" limestone. But further exami- 

 nation proved, as was suggested by M. de Verneuil, that they came 

 from the " Goniatite limestone." 



In the vicinity of Queensville unmistakable evidence was found that 

 it was " central in the Black slate" and "above the Cliff limestone." 

 Hence " should the European classification be adopted, this would re- 

 quire us to bring down our range of Carboniferous rocks to within 30 

 feet of the Cliff limestone." 



In a note which appeared in the Proceedings of the American Asso- 

 ciation 2 Mr. Christy reported that "M. de Verneuil had remarked in one 

 of his letters that these Goniatites, in the structure of their septa, present 

 a curious blending of the forms of the Carboniferous and Devonian 

 Goniatites, which, makes them exceedingly interesting; hence his 

 anxiety to ascertain their true geological position." 



This note reveals to us the method applied at this early date by de 

 Verneuil in the correlation of geological formations. He already appre- 

 ciated the historical (or perhaps chronological will more accurately 

 express it) relations of the morphological characters of fossils. 



Fossils were not merely "medals of creation" to him, they were 

 remains of organisms which had lived ; similarity suggested genetic 

 relationship. 



In 1852, Owen published his final report. 3 



'Christy D.: On the Goniatite limestone of Rockford, Jackson County, Indiana. Am. As^pc, 



, vol. 5, 1651, pp. 76-80. 

 * Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Proc.vol. 5, p. 180. 



3 Report of a geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, and incidentally of a portion of 

 Nebraska and Tennessee, by D. D. Owen, United States geologist. 



Bull. 80 10 



