452 R. T. Hill — The alleged Jurassic of Texas. 



Professor Marcou established his Jurassic at Tucumcarri 

 solely upon two species of fossil oyster. Each of these expedi- 

 tions, in addition to the two fossil oysters found by Professor 

 Marcou, collected large Cretaceous faunas of over a dozen 

 species, similar to that which occurs in Grayson County, Texas, 

 above the Comet Creek horizon (Preston Beds) which he has 

 himself referred to the Cretaceous, and published lists thereof 

 in the publications above mentioned.* His repeated assertion 

 that his adversaries will not or have not published figures of 

 these fossils is unjust. These fossils are mostly all well known 

 species which have been fully illustrated by their authors and are 

 in the United States National Museum, the State Capitol of 

 Texas, and at Johns Hopkins University, where they are 

 accessible to all interested, and have been, are being, or will be 

 duly published at the proper time and place as the systematic 

 work of publication of the Cretaceous stratigraphy and paleon- 

 tology of Texas progresses. 



Professor Marcou has saidf that his " observations, instead of 

 being accepted and used for further development of our knowl- 

 edge of the Texas Cretaceous, were, on the contrary, opposed 

 systematically." This statement is true except so far as the 

 last words are concerned, for the opposition was largely based 

 upon independent investigation of parties who, in some in- 

 stances like the writer, were predisposed to accept his conclu- 

 sions. Not only has Professor Marcou rigidly maintained the 

 fundamental errors of his conclusions as to age, but has used 

 them as a protext for assaulting the observations, often with 

 crimination and misquotation, of every later worker who has 

 since more thoroughly studied the field, or distorted their lan- 

 guage into confirmations of his own erroneous conclusions. 



The foregoing is a brief statement of the facts which gave 

 rise to a controversy, which has pervaded geologic literature for 

 nearly forty years, and which is marked by unparalleled bitter- 

 ness and accusations of American geologists as a body on the 

 part of Professor Marcou. This controversy will be again re- 

 ferred to in the later pages of this paper, after we say a few 

 words in direct reply to his article in the September number 

 of this Journal. 



A most serious, but less important defect of his paper is the 

 fact that he omits reference to most of the recent literature 

 which shows the fallacies of his conclusion concerning Comet 

 Creek and Tucumcarri, and these omissions leave the general 

 reader, who may judge the work of others by his article, under 

 a false impression concerning the questions involved. Sys- 



* Lists of those fossils were published by me in Science, Sept 1, 1895. and this 

 Journal. Sept. 1895. 



f American Geologist, August, 1894, p. 100. 



