ONWARD THROUGH THE AGES. \%\ 



to believe that it belongs to the same age of the world. 

 But the "Old Red Sandstone" of Miller is generally parti- 

 tioned off with Devonian strata, while the western beds 

 of the American formation abound in relics which recall 

 the life and times of Carboniferous populations. Indeed, 

 though some excellent authorities persist in pronouncing 

 the Marshall and Waverly rocks as belonging to the De- 

 vonian age, there is not a Western geologist who does not 

 believe them Carboniferous. I have myself had the good 

 fortune to study the fossil remains of this age, gathered 

 from all the Western States by my own hands, and to com- 

 pare them with fossils gathered from the Carboniferous 

 rocks of Europe, and also with fossils from the Catskill 

 sandstone of New York and Pennsylvania, and I have but 

 little hesitation in asserting that the rocks called Marshall 

 and Catskill were both deposited during the period of the 

 " Mountain Limestone" of Europe, which lies at *>r near the 

 base of the great Carboniferous system. 



If, then, the Catskill sandstone be the base of the Car- 

 boniferous system in America, the Old Red Sandstone of 

 Scotland, which has been identified in age, must be, con- 

 trary to the prevailing opinion, the base of the Carbonifer- 

 ous system in that country. In North America, the sedi- 

 ments of this period were derived from the wear of ocean 

 shores lying toward the northeast of the United States. 

 The coarser materials were deposited near their source, 

 while the finer were distributed over the centre of the con- 

 tinent. Thus the formation, which is a conglomerate or 

 coarse sandstone in New York and on the shore of Lake 

 Huron, is a fine sandstone in Southern Michigan, in Ohio, 

 and Iowa, and an arenaceous or argillaceous limestone in 

 Southern Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. In the Old World 

 during the same period, the coarse sediments gave rise to 

 the sandstone of Scotland, while in Yorkshire, Belo-ium ; and 



