62 0. Meyer — Species in the Southern Old-tertiary. 



bluff. If one of these two suppositions had been proved and 

 the other was doubtful, there would be no right to draw the 

 conclusion of Lyell, even if it had been proved besides that 

 there are no faults. But Lyell proves none of them. As for 

 the stratification, he was unable to bring forward any other 

 fact, than that he did not notice any dip at the points where he 

 made his observations. In a diagram, in his essay of the next 

 year, he represents a dip, not as he observed it, but as he needs 

 it for his hypothesis. As to the relative height, he also does 

 not bring forward any proof; and I cannot imagine how he 

 could possibly have obtained in Claiborne at that time any 

 reliable data about it. In short, Lyell's new hvpothesis was 

 without any proof at all, and was in contradiction to an 

 observed fact. Moreover, to sustain it, he had to make another 

 hypothesis, also entirely without proof: that this limestone was 

 totally eroded in Claiborne, but preserved in the vicinity. 



May, 1846. Charles Lyell "On the newer deposits of the 

 Southern States of North America" (Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. 

 London, ii, pp. 405-410, read May 6, 1846). On this question 

 Lyell writes, p. 408: "After visiting Claiborne and the country 

 on the other side of the Alabama Eiver in the fork of that 

 river and the Tombecbee, I am persuaded that the nummulite 

 limestone is Eocene, newer than all the beds of the well known 

 Claiborne bluff. It is in fact more modern than the sandy 

 deposit, from which the Eocene shells described in the publica- 

 tions of Messrs. Conrad and Lea were derived.'' We have 

 here a more decidedly pronounced expression of his hypothesis 

 without any proof. 



July, 1S46. Conrad, "Tertiary of Warren County, Miss." 

 (this Journal, ii, 2d series, pp. 124, 125). Here Conrad briefly 

 announces that he collected 103 species of fossils at Yicksburg; 

 he enumerates the genera, but had not yet made descriptions 

 of the species. To what age are these fossils attributed? He 

 himself had parallelized this Yicksburg bed with the nummulite 

 limestone of Alabama, Sir Charles Lyell claimed this limestone 

 to be more recent than the Eocene of Claiborne. So, if Conrad 

 did not wish to oppose this opinion of Lyell, he had only the 

 choice of considering these Vicksburg fossils more recent than 

 those from Claiborne. The fossils, considered alone, did not 

 show their age, and Conrad seems not to have made even an 

 attempt to question the decidedly pronounced opinion of the 

 celebrated English geologist ; for in this first announcement of 

 the Yicksburg fossils we see distinctly the presupposition of 

 their newer age, and he considers only whether they are more 

 nearly related to the Miocene or to the Eocene. He says : 

 " The Yicksburg group has decidedly more affinity with the 

 Eocene group than with that of the Miocene, for there is only 



