248 S. W. Ford and W. B. Dwight — Fossils obtained 



directly on the age of the accompanying limestones. In his reply, 

 as I report in the notice (on p. 312), he said that he was at " pres- 

 ent xxncertain as to the precise period of the Hoosic Slates." Prof. 

 C. H. Hitchcock, in 1884, had referred to the fossils as proving the 

 Lower Silurian age of the limestone, and in a letter of the 30th of 

 January last, says: "I do not recall any fossil there except the 

 graptolites." 



At the time of the earlier discussions in 1840 to 1844, in which 

 Professors Hall, Rogers, Mather and others, took part, the only 

 Taconic rocks under consideration were, as Prof. Hall remarked 

 in a letter to me of last September, those of the true Taconic range, 

 as defined in the above paper. I had no part in the discussion; 

 in fact, I knew nothing about the Taconic except what 1 learned 

 from the discussions after 1842, owing to my absence from the 

 country for the four years previous ; my first published opinion on 

 the question is in my Manual of Geology (1863) in which Logan's 

 conclusion was adopted. 



The report of Prof. Hall's remarks at Ann Arbor implied that 

 he spoke of having known of fossils from Canaan 40 years since. 



But, in a letter received soon after, he informed me that he- 

 was misunderstood and that he referred to fossils from the limestone 

 of Hoosic. The graptolites of the Hoosic slates are the only fos- 

 sils of that town mentioned by Prof. Emmons or others in the vari- 

 ous controversial writings on the subject; and as no notice of any 

 fossils in the Hoosic limestone had ever been published, I enquired 

 in another letter as to the species, in order to make the argument 

 from the facts more satisfactory, but have not yet received the 

 desired information. It is to be hoped that they will soon »be 

 announced, that the evidence as to the age of the Taconic schist 

 may be of the fullest possible character. 



Art. XXIII. — Preliminary Report of S. W. Ford, and W. B. 

 Dwight, upon fossils obtained in 1885 from Metamorphic 

 Limestones of the Taconic Series of Emmons at Canaan, N. Y. 

 —(With Plate VII.) 



A. Explanatory statements with reference to the paleontological 

 investigations at Canaan, N. Y., by W. B. Dwight. 



It seems proper to preface the Report on the fossils found in 

 1885 at Canaan, N. Y., by a few explanatory statements which 

 cannot well be included in that paper. 



My brief paleontological observations in the above mentioned 

 district have been made by the valued invitation of Prof. J. D. 

 Dana, in connection with his comprehensive study of that por- 

 tion of the Taconic range. At the locality where fossils were 

 first discovered, about 2400 feet southerly from the railroad 

 tunnel, only the smaller organisms have as yet been detected. 

 These are very difficult to observe, and therefore to collect, 



