OBSERVATIONS UPON THE WAVERLY GROUP. 505 



an end to all this by calling in the agency of shore action on its own ac- 

 count in the western part of the basin. Of this there is abundant evi- 

 dence in the oblique lamination and fucoids of that horizon. If we 

 admit the probability that Hamilton and New York Chemung played a 

 game of hide and seek during the preliminary oscillation they certainly 

 were sadly disturbed during the Berea epoch." 



"Then followed a gradual depression with occasional infiltration 

 from the Chemung area, now rapidly contracting. The Berea shales 

 mark the long period of isolation and gradual depression. When the 

 subsequent upheaval began the sea must have extended as far as to the 

 northern highlands and, after gnawing away at their bases and storing 

 up great reservoirs of material, there began the gradual depression which 

 spread them over the whole of the area. Time was then ripe for the 

 ■opening of the Carboniferous period. The old descendents of Hamilton 

 forms had done what they could, assisted by strays from the Chemung 

 areas further east, and having grown sadly out of fashion they were now 

 subjected to nearly the same influences which were applied in the Che- 

 mung area. I,ittoral action and coarse sediments soon bore fruit in a 

 fauna very like the later Chemung, though that period was now closed in 

 New York." 



"Thus grew up our Kinderhook or middle Waverly. But a tempo- 

 rary recession swept the waters backward depositing a shale containing 

 a few descendants of the old Waverly-shale fauna with interspersed forms 

 of Carboniferous types. It was now sub-carboniferous time and the ele- 

 vation which next followed left its trail of sandy material with a fauna 

 not unlike the Burlington but so hastily retreating as to build no lime- 

 stone fortifications. But in the far southeast now these limestones gath- 

 ered strength and with the next gain of Neptune flung a thin apron over 

 the lap of southwestern Ohio into which stormy Coal-measure seas cast 

 millions of tons of stones worn by the universal torrents from the 

 northern shores." 



"There can be little doubt that the materials of middle Waverly 

 sandstone and conglomerate were carried by rivers or the like. The 

 epoch of coal-measure conglomerate we have also spoken of as a torrent 

 period. On what grounds? 1st. The accumulation of tree trunks of 

 Carboniferous aspect. 2nd. The nature of the deposits. 3rd. The 

 fickle distribution of the material. 4th. The combination of new and old 

 material in its make-up, etc." 



An episode in the evolution of the Waverly problem was the publi- 

 cation of a paper by Professor H. S. Williams 1 announcing the discovery 

 at the base of the Chemung at High Point, Naples, N. Y., of a fauna with 

 decidely Carboniferous aspect, most nearly resembling that of the Kinder- 

 hook. This statement rests upon the similarity of the fauna with that 

 i On a Remarkable Fuana at the base of the Chemung Group in New York. 

 American Journal of Science, Feb., 1883. 



