222 L. EF. Hicks— Waverly Group in Central Ohio. 
sandstone. Still another plan is to compound the names of 
the underlying and overlying formations, and apply the com- 
pound to the disputed rocks, as in the case of the Cambro- 
Silurian of Great Britain, a term which recalls the long and hot 
Sedgwick-Murchison controversy. After all, though, these 
it broadly and judicially. 
The Waverly was long regarded as Devonian. When the 
present Geological Survey of Ohio was organized, one of the 
first announcements made by its chief, Dr. Newberry, was that 
the Waverly was Carboniferous. This decision covered only 
what we may conveniently call the Cuyahoga sub-group, i. €., 
Cuyahoga shales, Berea grit, Bedford ‘shales, and Cleveland 
shales. That part of the Waverly which is probably equiva- 
lent to the Erie shales would still fall to the Devonian if Erie 
is Devonian; and that was tacitly admitted by the chief geolo- 
gist, though he now claims that he placed it there out of defer- 
ence to the prevalent classification, all the while believing that 
the true boundary of the Carboniferous was at the base of the 
Erie in Ohio and of the Portage sandstone in New York. His 
statements in the first volume of the Ohio Reports, p. 166, and 
vol. ii, . 82, justify this claim and exonerate him from the 
charge of reversing his own decision in affirming, as he now 
does, that the whole of the Waverly, the Erie, the Portage, the 
Chemung and the Catskill are Carboniferous. 
_ While it may be true that this is no real change, though it 
is an apparent one, in Dr. Newberry’s opinions, it is certainly a 
great and radical change in the classification of American rocks, 
and the reasons for it merit our closest scrutiny. These alleged 
