242 C. SCHUCHERT — LOWEB HTELDERBERG-ORISKANY FORMATIONS 



Page 



Local development and faunas of the Oriskanian 300 



Upper Oriskany of New York 300 



Fauna of the Upper Oriskany, or Hipparionyx zone 303 



Lower Oriskany of New York 304 



Fauna! list of the New York Lower Oriskany . . 307 



Pennsylvania and New Jersey Oriskany 309 



Faunal lists of New Jersey and Pennsylvania 311 



Maryland and West Virginia Oriskany and its fauna 312 



Virginia Oriskany and its fauna 315 



( Jlear Creek limestone and Upper Oriskany of Illinois 317 



( 'ainden chert of Tennessee 319 



Camden Lower Oriskany fauna 320 



Georgia and Alabama Oriskany 322 



Oriskany of Canada 323 



Cayuga, Ontario 323 



Upper Oriskany fauna of Ontario 324 



Gaspe, Quebec , 327 



New Brunswick, Canada 328 



Oriskany fauna of Gaspe, Canada 328 



Nova Scotia, Canada .' 330 



Saint Helens island near Montreal, Canada 331 



Introduction 



Why is it that nearly all leading American stratigraphers as well as 

 the authors of the principal American geological text-books — Dana* 

 Le Conte,t Williams, X and Scott § — refer the Lower Helderberg to the 

 Siluric S3 7 stem ? This question gains peculiar force when another fact 

 is pointed out, namely, that nearly all European stratigraphers who 

 have investigated the systemic position of the Lower Helderberg, and 

 Geikie, || Kayser, ^f and Freeh,** in their respective text-books, unhes- 

 itatingly place the same formation in the Devonic, as lowest Lower 

 Devonic. This is not merely a question of drawing the line between 

 two geological eras, a little higher or a little lower in the time scale, but 

 it involves taxonomic principles and stages in faunal or evolutional 

 progression. 



* James I). Dana : Manual of Geology, 4th ed., New York, 1890, pp. 535, 5(59, 570. 



f Joseph Le Conte : Elements of Geology, New York, 1878, p. 282. The Oriskany is here also 

 included in the Siluric. Di the edition of 1895 the Siluric terminates with the Lower Helder- 

 berg (sec )>. 296). 



X Henry Slialer Williams : Geological Biology, New York, 1895, pp. 33, 52. 



* William Scott : An Introduction to Geology, New York, 1897, pp. 385, 394. 

 || Sir Archibald Geikie : Text-hook of Geology, London, 1893, p. 790. 



' E. Kayser : Text-hook of Comparative Geology, translated by Philip Lake, London. 1893, p. Ill- 

 ** Frit/. Freeh : Lethsea geognostica, l Theil, 2 hand, Stuttgart, 1897, p. 207. 



